


Episode 2-17 - "Between Two Fires"

by stgjr



Series: Undiscovered Frontier Season 2 - "Whispers of Destiny" [17]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005), Multi-Fandom, Original Work
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Multiple Crossovers, Multiverse, Space Opera
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-28
Updated: 2017-08-02
Packaged: 2018-12-08 04:19:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 31,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11638782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stgjr/pseuds/stgjr
Summary: The Aurora crew struggle to repair their crippled ship while helping the alien traveler known as the Doctor investigate a mysterious army of ghosts.





	1. Chapter 1

**Teaser**  
  
  
"And given the state of your ship, you look like you could use some help…"  
  
The bridge of the _Starship Aurora_ grew quiet at those words, and at the recognition among some of the name now attached to the speaker. The tall man in the brown coat and dark dress suit and tie with light blue dress shirt, but with very ordinary-looking white running shoes, next moved over to Barnes' console. "Oh, that does look bad. It's a good thing you're using the naqia or naquadah or whatever you want to call the stuff, so many names for it you know. If you'd been using anti-matter or a hyperspace tap you'd have been blown to bits."  
  
"You're the Doctor?" asked Caterina, the first of the crew to speak. "You're really… the _Doctor_?"  
  
"Well, I hate to brag…"  
  
"...no, he doesn't," the young woman with him, Rose Tyler, interrupted.  
  
He made a bemused face in her direction before continuing. "...but I am the Doctor, yes. You've heard of me? From the Darglan, I'm guessing?"  
  
"Well… you were in their databases." Cat shook her head. "That's all that's left of them, actually."  
  
The Doctor's expression fell. "Let me guess." His tone turned dark. "It was the… well, their name is virtually unpronounceable, so let's go with 'Shadows'."  
  
"Yes," answered Julia. She frowned. "Wait, how did you know them?"  
  
When he resumed speaking, the Doctor's voice kept its subdued, dark tone. "What, you thought the Darglan were the first species to achieve interuniversal drive? Don't be silly! It's happened plenty of times. We just end up giving it up, usually. Don't want to attract the wrong attention."  
  
"Wait." Rose looked from him to them in confusion. "What's this about interuniversal drive?"  
  
"That's what our ship has," Julia said. "An interuniversal jump drive developed by a race called the Darglan."  
  
"Ah, the Darglan. They were such a nice people." He shook his head sadly. "Ended up drawing all the wrong sort of attention, though. And that's putting it mildly. In the end we all had to come together to deal with that situation. I was there, and the Furlings, the Shadows and Vorlons and all those other First Ones with unpronounceable names, the Organians, the Endless and the Sword…"  
  
"We saw," Robert said, finding his voice finally. He forced the fears and thoughts prompted by Rose's appearance and faced the Doctor. "We just found an old Darglan science base that had a recording in it. It showed the Darglan being sentenced to having their interuniversal drives taken away."  
  
"It was the best solution we could manage," the Doctor said. "I thought they'd learned their lesson, but with the Shadows demanding their extermination and the Endless talking about decimating the population, well… that was the best compromise that didn't involve even more death." He directed his gaze toward Robert. And then he blinked. "Who are you, anyway?"  
  
"My name's Robert Dale," Robert said. "I'm Captain of this ship, the _Starship Aurora_. We're a part of the United Alliance of Systems."  
  
"Really? Alliance of Systems?" The Doctor tilted his head slightly, as if in thought. "Sounds nice. All Humans then?"  
  
"And the Alakin, the Dorei, and Gersallians."  
  
"Ah, good. How are they? The Gersallians, I mean. Swenya finally got everything together for them?"  
  
"Um… yes, I'd say," Robert replied delicately. "So, you're the Doctor. That makes you a…"  
  
"...Time Lord," Caterina answered, just as the Doctor said the same thing. He looked to her with interest. "Well, it was in the records," she said to him, her cheeks blushing now. "And… and I did meet Sarah Jane and she knew you…"  
  
A grin crossed the being's face. "Oh, you have. How is she?"  
  
"Um, fine?"  
  
"Well, except having her door smashed by that absorbing alien thing," Angel pointed out. "But she was getting that repaired."  
  
The Doctor acknowledged Angel's remark with a nod, but he quickly looked back to Caterina. "Are you alright?"  
  
"Huh?"  
  
"I mean, you look a little pale. And like you're about to explode," he observed.  
  
"Well, actually, we did just come within a few nanoseconds of dying," Caterina explained. "I… I think that's why I'm not shrieking in joy and trying to ask you a zillion questions."  
  
"Ah." He smiled at that.  
  
At that point Rose cleared her throat and held up her bag. "Laundry, remember?"  
  
"Oh, right. Well…" The Doctor gave her a sheepish look. "...it can wait, can't it? I mean, this is a genuine Darglan Emergency Vessel, and it's been a long time since I got to see one..."  
  
Rose sighed with some exasperation. "Alright. I'll call Mum and let her know we're coming." She pulled out a telephone.  
  
"How do you know this is your timeframe?" Caterina asked.  
  
"Oh, I set up the phone so she can call her mum whenever and wherever she likes," the Doctor explained. "But given the state of your ship, I'd say that you're in the same time we were planning to arrive anyway."  
  
"How could you know that?" Jarod asked.  
  
"Well, with what you've told me, I imagine you did something to gain the attention of the Shadows. You tried to escape with a jump point, they tried to destabilize it, and the result on this end was an unstable point that could act as a sort of magnet for the TARDIS. It's why we appeared here and now and not where and when I set the controls for." He inclined his head toward the viewscreen. "It's not the first time. Once I had a Darglan ship failing a jump that pulled the TARDIS right along with it. It was my fault, actually, wasn't minding the controls." He looked thoughtful for a moment. "The Daleks really regretted that mistake of mine, actually."  
  
Julia, while listening, decided it was time to act. "Nick, you should get to the medbay."  
  
"The lift in the conference lounge is still working," Jarod confirmed.  
  
"Good. Jarod, Tom, go with him, and report to Scotty to begin repairs." After they obeyed and departed the bridge, Julia looked over to where the Doctor was observing. "I hope you don't mind that we get down to business?"  
  
"Oh, of course not," he answered. "Although it looks like you're going to need a lot of work to get this ship going again."  
  
"Exactly."  
  
In the corner, Rose was saying, "No, I hate guessing, just go on and tell me…"  
  
"I can lend a hand," the Doctor offered. "I…"  
  
"What do you mean Granddad's coming?" Rose asked loudly, interrupting him. "Mum, that doesn't… right, I'll be there soon." She lowered her cell phone and noticed everyone looking toward her.  
  
"Is everything alright?" the Doctor asked.  
  
"No. No, it's not alright." Rose shook her head. Concern and confusion were written all over her face. "She just told me that my Granddad Prentice was coming to visit."  
  
"Well, that sounds… nice?" Angel offered.  
  
"I haven't met your Granddad yet," the Doctor said. "What's he like?"  
  
"He was nice," Rose answered. "But, he's dead. He died ten years ago."  
  
  


**Undiscovered Frontier  
_"Between Two Fires"_**

  
  
  
Rose's news was, for the _Aurora_ crew, just one more thing in a day that had been terrifying and bizarre. The Doctor, for his part, didn't seem nearly as confused as they did. "So your mother's finally gone mad?"  
  
"I… I don't know." Rose shook her head. "She didn't sound mad. She acted like it's perfectly normal. She says he'll be there in half an hour."  
  
"Well, we'd better look into this." The Doctor turned toward Robert and Julia. "I hate to be rude, but it's her mum, and there's all sorts of nasty things that can look like ghosts. I'll have to check back in with you later."  
  
"Oh, sure?" Robert and Julia exchanged looks. Robert continued, "I mean, you're not under any obligation to us. We haven't even asked for your help yet. I've got no problem with you checking out this 'ghost' thing." A thought crossed Robert's mind. A thought… and a feeling deep within him. "Maybe my security chief and I can help?"  
  
"Help with ghosts?" Rose asked, clearly skeptical.  
  
Robert nodded. "We can sense if there's anything to it. If it's some kind of life. Commander Meridina is a telepath and was trained by the Order of Swenya."  
  
"Oh, that sounds lovely," said the Doctor. "Nice to know she got that order going. And I thought there was something interesting about you. Trained in that style, right? But I don't see a lightsaber anywhere on you, so I'm guessing you're not the combat type?"  
  
"Not yet, and probably not ever," Robert admitted.  
  
"Ah. Well, alright. Offer accepted."  
  
Robert tapped the comm control on his chair. "Bridge to Security. Commander Meridina, are you there?"  
  
After several moments a reply came, " _I am available, Captain. Is there something you need from me?_ "  
  
"Report to the bridge immediately."  
  
" _I am coming_. _Security out._ "  
  
Caterina stood. "Can I come too?" she asked. Everyone looked to her. "I mean… most of my sensors are busted, but my omnitool is still working, I can take scans of whatever is happening, help out with the science stuff? I'm… I'm good with science, Doctor." She focused her attention on him. "I love science."  
  
Julia gave Robert an uncomfortable look. So did Angel. Robert drew in a breath and took a moment to think on the subject. To feel for what seemed to be the right answer.  
  
"I have no objection," he finally said.  
  
"Well, there's no harm in it, really."  
  
Caterina grinned and jumped from her seat. Robert could sense her sheer enthusiasm at the prospect. He could also sense a sudden, sharp pang of something from Rose, who crossed her arms and looking away from Cat and the Doctor. Was it… irritation? That and maybe a little jealousy, Robert decided.  
  
"Rob." Julia touched his arm and tilted her head toward his ready office.  
  
"Hrm? Oh. Excuse us," he said, addressing that to everyone. He followed Julia into the office. There was no hiding her frustration or irritation. "Okay, what…"  
  
Julia turned back and faced him with a sharp, disapproving look. "Rob, need I remind you that this ship just got sliced up? We've got dead and hurt crew, a ship stranded in another universe and out of communication, and now you're going to leave it to… to what, play 'Ghostbusters' with this guy?" She gestured toward the door. "This is irresponsible."  
  
"I can see why you think that," Robert replied. "But the way I figure it, the sooner we help him with whatever it is going on, the sooner he can help us. And I know he will. The Darglan knew and respected the Doctor for a reason."  
  
"And you know that's him? You can sense the truth of that? He's willing to help us?"  
  
"I do."  
  
To that Julia sighed. "Alright, that's a good argument to make. And I can even understand you going along since you've got these powers. But bringing Cat too? I mean, Meridina is one thing, but we could use Caterina up here. We need everyone we can get on the repair teams."  
  
"Cat's smart, but she's not a full engineer," Robert countered. "If she comes with us, her omnitool scans can be the science side of what Meridina and I sense." Seeing Julia was still not entirely won over, he added, "I'm not bringing Lucy because, yes, the ship needs repairs, and Lucy's place is here on the repair teams. But Cat and Meridina, myself? We'll get more accomplished working with the Doctor and getting him back here quickly than we will joining a repair team." Robert looked her eye to eye. "Julia, I'm not just running off to leave this repair job to you. I'm doing this for a reason. I know this will help us. And given the state of the ship we need the help."  
  
"I'm not upset at the idea of directing the repair," Julia countered. "It'll be useful for when I command my own ship anyway. But keep in mind that eventually you're going to have an XO not as understanding as me. You can't just keep running off on these kinds of missions, Rob. Not when you're the Captain of this ship. Your place is here, commanding."  
  
"I know, but sometimes I have to do these things." Robert shook his head. "Besides, it's not like I'm always running off on these kinds of missions."  
  
Julia raised her eyebrows in sarcastic surprise. "Really? You just spent nearly a week off the ship on a secret mission. The only reason you didn't go on a field mission on Solaris was because President Sinclair insisted on breakfast with you. You challenged Lincoln Osis to a fight. And let's not forget last year at Gamma Piratus when you and I did the exact opposite things we were meant to do."  
  
"Those were all special cases." Robert's face betrayed his bewilderment at the conversation. "What's going on? Why are we having this conversation?"  
  
"Because I care about you," Julia answered. "Because I'm not going to be around here anymore and I don't want you losing your command because you end up with someone like Commander King as your new First Officer, someone who's not going to overlook you trying to operate in the field."  
  
"That's not going to happen," Robert pledged to her. "Don't worry about me." He checked his omnitool for the time. "Meridina should be here any moment. We should head back out."  
  
Knowing the conversation was over, Julia nodded and turned. They went for the door together.  
  
  
  
  
Meridina was nearly to the lift when Lucy intercepted her. "I'm heading to the bridge to begin fixing the consoles," she explained, indicating her tool belt. Her lightsaber was also affixed to it. "Is Robert sending you into the field?"  
  
"I suspect so."  
  
"Then be careful." Seeing that Meridina didn't quite understand what the problem was, Lucy took her lightsaber from her belt and activated it. There was a brief burst of light and then nothing. "Whatever was done to the ship also affected our lightsabers."  
  
Meridina took her own out and tried to turn it on. It didn't work either. "Perhaps I should get my _lakesh_?" she proposed.  
  
"I doubt it'll do any good," Lucy replied. "The disruption field would have damaged the memory metal or the EM field system as easily as it did the lightsabers."  
  
"So I will be without a weapon." Meridina considered this issue carefully. "Very well. Such things happen from time to time. I shall be careful."  
  
"I wish I had time to fix them," Lucy said.  
  
"You will find time when the ship's repairs have progressed." Meridina handed the weapon over to Lucy. "I shall speak to you later."  
  
Lucy gripped Meridina's arm. Not tightly, but enough to get her attention. "This situation… I've got bad feelings about it, Meridina. Please be careful."  
  
"I have felt the same, and I will be," Meridina answered. "I promise."  
  
After a moment Lucy let go and they continued on, quietly, to the functioning lift.  
  
  
  
  
The arrival of Lucy and Meridina to the bridge prompted a reaction from the Doctor. "It's so good to see a Gersallian again," he said brightly. "Look at you. And a _farisa_ too."  
  
Meridina blinked at him. "You are familiar with my people, then?"  
  
"Oh, quite familiar." He grinned. "I knew Swenya back in the day. She had quite the taste for jellybabies. More than that old grouch of a mentor she had." For a moment the Doctor narrowed his eyes at her. "You remind me a bit of her. I think it's the nose." He tapped his own.  
  
Robert sensed Meridina's disbelief turn into surprise when she sensed the Doctor's sincerity on the issue. "Truly? If you knew the Great Foundress, then…"  
  
"Really? Do you really call her that? I'm not sure she'd have liked that," he said. "But we can talk about that later. We have a date with someone who's supposed to be dead."  
  
Robert nodded and turned to Julia. "We'll try to stay in communication."  
  
"Jarod's supposed to be working on it," Julia said. "Until then… be careful."  
  
Caterina bounded up to the door of the police box, eager to enter. The Doctor stepped up and opened the door for her and the rest. They entered to find a chamber just as big as the _Aurora_ bridge. But it certainly wasn't a control room like he expected. The interior design consisted of gold-surfaced, curved pillars coming from below the floor to the wall, with something of a coral look to them. In the center of this open chamber was a hexagonal platform. The round control console there was around a pillar with a mechanism inside of the tube, with wiring leading from the top to the walls. The ramp from the door to the control platform was tiled with red material.  
  
"A dimensionally-transcendental field!" Caterina squealed in excitement. She continued in and went up to the controls to get a good look at the chamber. "It's… it's amazing!"  
  
"Aren't you enthusiastic?" the Doctor mused with an amused expression. He walked up to join her. "Just be careful about touching her. My TARDIS can be fussy at times."  
  
"TARDIS?" asked Meridina.  
  
"Time And Relative Dimension In Space," Rose answered. "It's why it's bigger on the inside."  
  
"Just like Darglan Facilities…" Meridina stepped on past her.  
  
Robert, however did not. He glanced toward her and said, lowly, "Don't feel challenged by Cat, please."  
  
"What?" Rose turned her head and faced him. "What do you mean by that?"  
  
"What I mean is that if Caterina was going to have certain feelings for either of you, Rose, it'd be you," he replied. "And she's actually quite happy with her girlfriend, from what I know."  
  
"What? Oh." Rose blinked with understanding. A blush showed on her and, Robert thought, a little embarrassment too. She looked to where Cat was asking questions about the TARDIS while the Doctor started operating the controls. "She looks really excited."  
  
"Caterina is our science officer for a reason," Robert answered. "If it's something new, she's going to scan it thoroughly, examine it, and decide what it is and the science of it."  
  
"Right."  
  
"Alright, time to be off then." The Doctor looked over his console instruments and then glanced toward Rose. "Time to see if your mother's finally gone mad."  
  
"You're not flying this through my ship, are you?" Robert was seized by the mental image of the police box flying through the corridors. It was both funny and disturbing.  
  
"Of course not," declared the Doctor. "That's just silly. No, I'm simply dematerializing us from your ship, shifting us through the Time Vortex, and re-materializing at our destination. It's simple."  
  
"I'm betting you say that about every impossible thing you talk about doing," Robert pointed out.  
  
"Nah." The Doctor looked up from the controls. "Just most things."  
  
There was a final pull of a lever somewhere and the mechanism in the pillar of the control console began to move. The "vworp" sound filled the air.  
  
After several moments it stopped. The Doctor checked a monitor screen, nodded, and went for the door. Outside was a series of urban apartments with a nearby playground for children. The sky was clear and the morning sunny.  
  
"Here we are then," he said at the door. "Time for laundry and Granddads who are supposed to be dead."  
  
  
  
  
After the Doctor's ship faded from view on the _Aurora_ bridge, Julia settled into the command chair. Lucy was already working on the navigation console. She finished pulling away the access panel on the "back" (which, naturally, faced the front of the bridge).  
  
With her console out and nothing to do, Angel walked up and sat in the VIP seat to Julia's left. "First our ship gets sliced up by ancient aliens that were supposed to be gone, now we're getting mixed up with some guy the Darglan treated like a legend. Is it just me or is this situation completely insane?"  
  
"It's certainly out there," Julia agreed.  
  
"Hopefully we don't have anything like this happen on the _Enterprise_."  
  
To that thought, Julia snorted. "Are you kidding? We'll probably end up in plenty of insane situations no matter what ship we're on. It's a crazy Multiverse."  
  
Angel smiled despite herself. "Yeah, I guess you're right." After a moment's thought she asked, "Have you picked out a First Officer yet?"  
  
"Nobody from here, I'm afraid," Julia said. "I'll have to get one from the rest of the fleet."  
  
"What about Nasira Fanous? From the _Challenger_? It'd be a step up for her."  
  
"Maybe." Julia tapped the key on the chair to activate the comms. Which, she mused, seemed to be one of the few systems properly working. "Bridge to Engineering. Mister Scott, what's our status?"  
  
" _Nae very good, Commander. Th' warp drive is shot an' will need a yard rebuild, th' jump drive will require hours o' repair an' I cannae promise it'll work even then, I need time t' deal with these bloody hull breaches, an' we lost both comm arrays. Mister Jarod will be rebuildin' 'em in th' machine shops. Dinnae expect any comms for another twelve hours or more._ "  
  
"Any good news for me, Mister Scott?"  
  
" _Give my teams eight hours an' I can get ye impulse up t' three-quarters._ "  
  
"Just get us enough impulse capability for maneuvering. The safety of the ship comes first, after that the priority's going to be our jump drive or IU radio."  
  
" _Roger that, Commander. Scott out._ "  
  
Julia set her hands on the arms of the command chair and blew out a breath. Scotty and Jarod (and Tom and Lucy) would have the repairs well in hand, and Leo was undoubtedly busy with triage and care for the wounded. They wouldn't want or need her lingering around. There was little to do now for her but to wait.  
  
  
  
  
It was somewhat awkward when the group showed up at the Tyler apartment. "Ah, Rose, you're just in time!" the middle-aged blond woman who met them inside the door cried. She embraced her daughter warmly. "Oh, how have you been?"  
  
"Great, mum." Rose held up her backpack. "And I've got a lot of wash to do, and I've got you a present."  
  
"You can show it to your Granddad," Jackie insisted. Next she grabbed the Doctor into an embrace and planted a clearly-unexpected kiss on his lips. "And you, it's good to see you too," she announced after the kiss.  
  
The Doctor, still looking rather bewildered and a bit disturbed, said, "Ah, well, it's good to see you too."  
  
Jackie turned to the door and seemed to finally notice Robert, Meridina, and Caterina. "Well now, who are you?" she asked. "And what kind of uniforms are those?"  
  
"Alliance Stellar Navy uniforms, ma'am," Robert said. "I'm Captain Robert Dale of the _Starship Aurora_. We're… well, it's a long story, but right now my badly damaged ship is in orbit and…"  
  
He was interrupted when Jackie checked her watch and announced, "Oh, it's almost time! Glad to have you here, go on and make yourselves at home." She turned away and went back to Rose. "Your Granddad will be here in a minute. What's that?"  
  
Rose held up a trinket made of an unknown material. "I got it from an asteroid bazaar. It's made of…" She looked to the Doctor with an unspoken question.  
  
"Bazoolium," he answered.  
  
"...it's Bazoolium. If it's going to rain it turns cold, if it's going to be sunny it turns hot. You can use it to tell the weather."  
  
"Lovely, dear, let's go show it to Granddad Prentice."  
  
"Mum…" Rose let her mother guide her toward the flat's kitchen. "Granddad Prentice, his heart gave out, don't you remember?" The Doctor and the others followed. It looked like a cozy little home to Robert and Cat, something like what they'd grown up in. Robert could sense it wasn't so cozy for Jackie Tyler, though. He could feel the yawning sense of loneliness in the older woman, living alone in the world.  
  
Jackie was the only one to enter the kitchen fully. She answered Rose's question with, "Of course I do." She checked her watch. "Ten past. He'll be here any moment," she said, oblivious to her daughter's fear and apprehension at her words.  
  
Caterina immediately activated her omnitool. "Huh, that's weird. I'm starting to pick up…"  
  
A figure stepped through the wall and counters at the far side of the kitchen. It looked vaguely human, making Robert think of what a walking shadow might look like. Light seemed to curve ever so slightly around it. He consciously felt for it through the Flow of Life. But there was nothing definite there. No feeling of life. Just a strange sense of the thing being "off" somehow. A sort of hollowness in the world.  
  
Caterina kept her forearm up. "It's a spatial disturbance of some kind. As in, it's warping space around it slightly. I'd almost think…"  
  
The Doctor turned and ran past her for the door. Rose followed, and Jackie in turn followed her daughter. Caterina, curioused, followed right behind.  
  
Meridina approached the figure still in the kitchen. "I will remain," she murmured.  
  
Robert nodded and took off in pursuit of the others.  
  
  
  
  
The relative quiet of the _Aurora_ bridge ended abruptly. "Commander?" Ensign al-Rashad looked up from sensors. "Something's going on with the planet."  
  
Julia turned in her chair and looked at the younger Arab woman. "What is it?"  
  
"Because of the damage to the ship's sensors I can't be sure of what I'm seeing," al-Rashad answered. "But what I can see are signs of a major spatial distortion on Earth. Something is generating a massive amount of energy and causing some sort of planetary-scale spatial disruptions."  
  
"Can you give me anything specific, lieutenant?"  
  
"I'm afraid not, ma'am."  
  
"Keep me informed of new developments." Julia kept any worry from coming into her voice, but she couldn't hide it from herself.  
  
_Just what is going on down there?_  
  
  
  
"They're everywhere!"  
  
Cat was the last to arrive. The Doctor, and Rose, were staring at the scene of more of the black ghostly figures standing and moving around. She checked her omnitool and confirmed that the spatial disruptions were even stronger out here.  
  
"They won't be for much longer." Jackie checked her watch. "This shift's the short one, it's only a couple of minutes."  
  
"Since when do ghosts have shifts?" The Doctor looked around, still incredulous. "Since when do shifts have _ghosts_?"  
  
"And why isn't anyone running away?" Rose asked. "It's like they don't care that all of these… things are walking around…"  
  
"Everyone was panicking when it first happened," Jackie said. "That was a couple of months ago. But people began to think about it and realized how wonderful it is. To have all of our friends and family back."  
  
"The spatial distortions are gone,' Caterina said. She lowered her forearm. "But… how do you know these things are… y'know, people?"  
  
"They're not," the Doctor insisted. "This is something else."  
  
Cat saw the upset look on Jackie Tyler's face and would have been surprised to see she had something of the same. For just a moment she considered what it would mean if it was true. Her very next thought was if one of those dark figures could be her Mama.  
  
That caused tears to form in her eyes.  
  
"You alright?" The Doctor was looking at her.  
  
"Um… yes." Caterina wiped the tears away. "Sorry, just a… just a silly thought. I don't think ghosts would give off spatial distortions."  
  
"Can I have a look at those readings?"  
  
"S-sure." Caterina gestured toward the entryway leading back to the Tyler flat. "Inside? We're not supposed to show off our technology here. The last time I had to spend a whole day getting debriefed by government agents."  
  
"Fair enough," was the answer. "Inside we go."  
  
  
  
  
The TV in the Tyler home flipped from channel to channel. The Doctor sat on the floor in front of the device, watching intently as everything from commercials to news shows and talk shows spoke about the ghosts. "They're everywhere," Rose said.  
  
"How peculiar," Meridina noted from where she was standing by the wall, watching the image of a trio of Japanese girls wearing ghost-icon shirts and shrieking with enthusiasm she previously had attributed to Caterina finding something she found terribly interesting. "The people of this world have not responded as I imagined they would."  
  
"Probably for the same reason flying in spaceships stopped being quite so spectacular for us," Robert answered. "You get used to it."  
  
"Mum, how do you know it's Granddad?" Rose asked. She was seated on the couch beside her mother.  
  
"Well, can't you tell? He still has that old cigarette smell. You remember."  
  
"I do mum." Rose shook her head. "But I don't smell anything."  
  
"Well, you have to make an effort. You have to _want_ it, sweetheart."  
  
"But then the question must be if it is truly there, or you are imagining it," Meridina pointed out to her. That won her a disapproving look.  
  
"No, she's right." The Doctor shook his head. "The more you want it, the stronger it gets."  
  
"Sort of," Jackie conceded.  
  
"Like a psychic link. You want your old dad to be alive. And whatever they are, they might be trying to use that. To pull themselves into this world."  
  
"You mean they may be trying to access the power of the Flow of Life?" asked Meridina.  
  
"Maybe, maybe not."  
  
Jackie's voice was cold to the point of hostility. "You're spoiled it. You're all spoiling it. Why can't you just accept the ones we love are trying to come back to us?"  
  
"I understand." Caterina sat down on the floor in front of Jackie and looked up to her. "If I could see my Mama again, I'd do anything for that. I wish she was here with us as much as you want your dad back. But I think the Doctor's right. I mean, there's a scientific explanation for this, and these things may not even be human."  
  
"They certainly look human," Robert pointed out.  
  
"They do. I mean, they're all sort of blurry."  
  
"True. That's because they're impressing themselves upon the surface of the world." The Doctor eyed them all. "But a footprint doesn't look like a boot."   
  
"Maybe I can find some things from the Science Labs that will help?" Caterina suggested. "I mean, help figure out what these things are."  
  
"Thank you for the offer, but I've got everything I need for this. Oh, right…" The Doctor looked apologetically to Robert. "Do you mind if I look into this first? Your ship's not going anywhere, right? Not going to run out of air any time soon?"  
  
"I don't think so," Robert conceded. "We're just in a high orbit and out of communication with our people."  
  
"Oh, I'll have that sorted out for you in seconds," the Doctor insisted. "This, on the other hand, bit trickier."  
  
"Another 'fate of the world hangs in the balance' thing, I suppose?" Rose asked.  
  
"Those are always the most fun, aren't they?" The Doctor stood up. "Alright, next shift is in what…?"  
  
"In an hour or so," Jackie answered, almost automatically.  
  
"Ah, good. We've got time." The Doctor went for the door.  
  
"To do what?" Jackie called after him. But he was already out the door. Rose followed and, behind her, Jackie did as well.  
  
The three _Aurora_ crew looked at each other. "So much for our repairs," Robert sighed.  
  
"Yes, but he's right," Caterina said. "Whatever these things are… if they're from some other dimension, they could cause a lot of damage. If it's a breach between dimensional planes, or into subspace, there's no telling what kind of harm it could cause. Even the _Aurora_ might get affected. This really should be the priority."  
  
"Meridina?" Robert faced her next.  
  
"Caterina is probably right," Meridina said. "Regardless, I am concerned. There is something not right with these 'ghosts'. I believe something terribly wrong is happening."  
  
"I'll call Julia and exchange updates with her," Robert said. "Cat, go ahead and help, if the Doctor needs it."  
  
It was clear she didn't need to be asked twice. Caterina took off for the door.  
  
For a moment Robert and Meridina shared an uneasy look. "You sense it, don't you?" Meridina asked.  
  
"A general feeling off 'things are about to go to hell'?" He nodded. "And that's not the worse thing."  
  
"Oh?"  
  
"Rose Tyler." Robert frowned. "She's the one in my dreams. She's the one saying 'Bad Wolf'."  
  
Meridina nodded. "I see. Perhaps you should ask her what the term means?"  
  
"I'll have to." Robert swallowed. "But this feeling I'm getting, Meridina, it's bad. The dreams mentioned a 'choice' I'll have to make. That it could determine, well, everything."  
  
"Choices often do," Meridina reminded him. "Although I agree that this one could be particularly important for us. I can only advise you as I always have; keep clarity in your thoughts and let your _swevyra_ guide you."  
  
"Right." At that Robert let out a sigh. "I could do with a big neon sign from my _swevyra_ , or the universe at large. It's easier that way."  
  
"The universe seems to pride itself on being difficult in that fashion," Meridina agreed. "Shall we follow the others?"  
  
"We should."  
  
They departed together.  
  
  
  
  
The Doctor had accepted Caterina's assistance and, for the moment, had asked her to set up cones that would generate a field related to his triangulation attempt. Caterina was setting the last one up. With a careful eye she made sure they formed the triangle as the Doctor had instructed. Her omnitool provided final confirmation.  
  
"Do you really want this?" asked Jackie Tyler. She was standing several feet away from the cone furthest from the TARDIS.  
  
"Want what?"  
  
"For him to spoil it," answered Jackie. "To take something wonderful and make it all nasty and simple. Don't you want your Mum back?"  
  
The question made Caterina lower her head. "I've love to see Mama again," she admitted. "There's so much that's happened that I want to show her. So much I want to tell her and show her. But she's gone, and these things… I don't believe any of them are her or your Dad or anyone else's lost family. And whatever they are, we need to know."  
  
"Why? Why can't it just be a miracle for all of us? Our families and loved ones coming back to be with us again. Isn't that a wonderful thing?"  
  
"I'm not… maybe… but maybe not?" Cat shook her head. "I don't know. People say I, we, have to move on and live our own lives. And sometimes I think I do. Until someone says something or I smell anything that's like my mother's cooking. She… loved to cook, I mean. Even after getting off a ten hour work shift, she'd make sure that Angel and I had a dinner."  
  
"Angel?"  
  
"My sister."  
  
Jackie nodded quietly at that.  
  
"I miss that. And she always insisted on hugging me when I went to bed, even when I was already in high school." Cat had to wipe away a tear.  
  
"So you know what I mean," Jackie insisted. "This could be everyone we've lost, coming back to us."  
  
"But are they? I mean, they don't act like anyone," Cat pointed out. "They don't talk. They don't interact. They just… they just walk around like they're mindless. They don't even seem to care about the people around them. I mean, if Mama showed up in my quarters as a ghost, she wouldn't just stand around, she'd hug me and ask if I've eaten lately. Has this ghost ever done that for you?"  
  
Jackie opened her mouth to mount a defensive reply. But she stopped because the truth was obvious. No, it hadn't. The ghost had only ever walked through the flat. It looked no different from any other of the spectral figures. You couldn't even tell them apart. And certainly her father wouldn't have ignored her. He might have wanted to know where Rose was, why he'd let Rose run off with a stranger… but ignore her?  
  
But the smell of the old cigarettes. It seemed so _real_.  
  
The Doctor ran out of the TARDIS, Rose right behind. "How long until the next shift?" he asked Jackie.  
  
"Quarter to." Jackie frowned at him. "Are you going to cause trouble? What's this lot do?" She indicated the cones Caterina had laid out.  
  
"Triangulates their point of origin." The Doctor checked the placement of the cones and nodded to Caterina. "Excellent job…"  
  
"Caterina." Cat smiled slightly. "Or 'Cat' if you'd like."  
  
"Yes, Caterina! Such a lovely name."  
  
"You don't suppose it's the Gelth?" Rose asked.  
  
"Nah." The Doctor picked up one of the cones and began to fix wires to it. "They were just coming through one little rift. This lot are transposing themselves over the whole planet." He moved on to the next. "Like tracing paper."  
  
"You're always doing this," Jackie protested. "Reducing it to science. Why can't it be real? Just think of all the people we've lost, coming back home. It'd be beautiful."  
  
"Beautiful?" The Doctor looked at her. "I think it'd be horrific."  
  
That remark prompted a look of shock from Jackie. Caterina looked at him in surprise before she thought about it. If this really was the dead, then it meant they weren't resting, but nor were they back. They were just mindless silhouettes and shadows, condemned to blipping in and out of existence. She imagined her mother suffering that fate and shook her head.  
  
"Rose, give us a hand. Cat, I need you to keep that scanner active and make absolutely sure that the alignment of the cones doesn't change."  
  
"Right." Caterina lifted her left forearm and activated her omnitool.  
  
The Doctor pulled the wires hooked to the cones back into the TARDIS with Rose following. Jackie followed close behind.  
  
Robert and Meridina walked around the cones to stand beside Caterina. "How's it going?"  
  
"Great." Cat waved her hand over everything. "The Doctor set this up to track the distortions caused by these ghosts back to their point of origin."  
  
"Right."  
  
"I sense sadness," said Meridina. "Are you alright?"  
  
"What? I'm fine," insisted Caterina. When she saw the quiet skeptical looks in their faces Cat sighed and shook her head. "Look, it's fine, okay? All this talk of ghosts just got me to thinking about Mama. If she came back as a ghost, and it was really her…" Cat stopped for a moment as she followed that thought through. For a moment she was distracted by the return of the Doctor. He began to use the device he had slung on his back on the cones. She waited until he and Rose exchanged information before continuing. "...well, I'd ask why she's not in Heaven, I guess. But then I'd hug her and cry a lot and show her everything in our lives now. This… this is what she wanted for me." Cat indicated her omnitool. "Being a scientist, I mean."  
  
"I know." Robert patted her on the shoulder. "And she'd be proud of you."  
  
The Doctor looked up from his work. "Caterina, is the alignment stable?"  
  
Cat checked her omnitool. "It's still stable, Doctor."  
  
"Excellent. We're almost there!"  
  
"What about you?" Caterina turned her head to meet his eyes. "Would you want to have Mr. and Mrs. Dale back? Or Susie?" Caterina smiled sadly. "I always loved hanging out with Susie. She'd ask science questions and I'd answer them. And then she'd talk about what it'd be like if we were both aunts to your kids and how we'd have funs with nephews and nieces…"  
  
Robert chuckled at that, not quite able to hide the pain. "You two thought Angel and I would have kids, huh?"  
  
"Yeah. I mean, we were younger, it just seemed the thing that would happen." Caterina shrugged before putting her eyes back on the scanner.  
  
"Here we go!" the Doctor called out, interrupting the conversation again.  
  
From within the TARDIS, Rose's voice called out, "Scanner's working! It says, 'Delta one six'!"  
  
"The alignment reading is still good," Caterina added. "I'm ready to confirm triangulation!"  
  
The Doctor stepped back from the cones and stood to his full height. A bright, enthusiastic expression appeared on his face. "Come on, then, you beauty!" he called out, letting the last word roll with an open-mouthed grin.  
  
Seconds passed. "Energy surge, spatial distortion forming," Caterina confirmed. Her fingers tapped at her omnitool.  
  
Crackling energy formed between the three cones. Three more lines of the same jumped upward, meeting several feet in the air to form a pyramid shape within the cones. A black spectral figure materialized there. The Doctor pulled out a pair of what looked like old 3D plastic glasses, the kind handed out for 3D shows at theme parks, and put them on to continue observing the ghostly form.  
  
After this effect held for several moments, the Doctor ducked down and began operating a control device that made Robert think of an old mid-20th Century radio. Lights flashed on it. The Doctor turned a brown knob on it back and forth, producing an electronic whine that was just as evocative of some old 50s-era radio or TV set. He never looked toward it, however, keeping his eye on the form within, now swaying and moving as if it were seriously upset or irritated. "You don't like that much, do you?"  
  
"The anomaly is destabilizing. The distortion is faltering from interference," Caterina said.  
  
"Who are you? Where are you from?" The Doctor knelt a little closer to the figure. When it swiped at him he stepped back. "Woah, that's more like it. Not so friendly now, are you?"  
  
"I think you've made it mad," Robert noted wryly.  
  
"I should think so," the Doctor answered. "I'm exciting the energy field. It's keeping this fellow from impressing on this world like he ought to, and it'll let me track the source of the field to boot."  
  
"The field is weakening," Caterina said. "It looks like it's being shut down."  
  
"Probably at the source, but it's too late for them to hide." The Doctor chuckled. "I've got 'em."'  
  
The figure suddenly dematerialized. The energetic pyramid formed by the cones dissipated.  
  
"Alright everyone, I'm off to track down the source." The Doctor looked at them briefly. "You can come with if you'd like." He started snatching up his things.  
  
After he entered the TARDIS Caterina gave Robert an almost pleading look. Robert looked to Meridina, who nodded quietly. "We can do more good with him," she said.  
  
"Alright," replied Robert. He had his own gut feeling - or was it _swevyra_ granted-insight? - that they would be needed. "We'd better go before he leaves."  
  
Cat beat them all to the TARDIS door. Robert was the last to enter. As he did, he couldn't help but feel as if someone was watching him.  
  
  
  
  
Lucy picked herself up from underneath the secondary tactical station. "Alright, I'm done," she said, getting the attention of Julia and Angel in particular as she pulled herself back to her feet. Behind her the console in question was active again, as were all of the bridge consoles once disabled by what had happened.  
  
"Good." Julia leaned forward in the command chair. "Technical Officer, status on ship repairs?"  
  
With all operations and engineering personnel diverted to the actual task of fixing their crippled ship, the watch at the bridge Operations station had gone to one of the ship's Technical Officers-in-training. The English-accented young man now at Ops, Technical Officer Matthews, turned back from the console to address Julia directly. "Engineering has brought another naqia reactor back online. Hull breaches in the upper decks have been reduced by three quarters. Impulsor drives are functional for maneuvering only. The armor repair systems are still offline, and we still have no warp drive or jump drive."  
  
"Thank you."  
  
"I'll go find Jarod and see where he wants me," Lucy said. "But looking at the damage to the ship, we're better off putting together another IU radio and calling for help."  
  
"Mister Scott already thought of that," said Julia. "But the Shadows hit our machine shops while they were cutting up our drive section. Until those shops are fixed, there's nothing we can do."  
  
"And you've got Scotty prioritizing hull breaches to stabilize structural integrity." Lucy turned away. "Well, I'll…"  
  
To the others, she simply doubled over as if in pain. For Lucy, it wasn't a physical pain. Every part of her cried out in worry, almost terror, as if something dreadfully wrong was happening and causing danger to them all. She gasped as she dropped to a knee in shock.  
  
"Lieutenant?" Julia got out of her chair and went over to her. Angel did the same, getting there a few seconds before Julia. "Are you alright?"  
  
"You look like you've seen a ghost," Angel observed. "No pun intended."  
  
"Something's wrong," Lucy gasped.  
  
"Well, yeah," Angel said. "A lot of things…"  
  
"No!" Lucy shot a hot look at Angel that stopped her in her tracks. "Something is _wrong_. There's… there's something completely wrong here. The ship, this Earth, we're all in terrible danger."  
  
Angel looked up to Julia, who helped her get Lucy back to her feet. "Can you be more specific?" she asked.  
  
"I wish I could," Lucy said. She put a hand to her brow, now covered in sweat. "I… I need to go do something."


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Aurora crew struggle to repair their crippled ship while helping the alien traveler known as the Doctor investigate a mysterious army of ghosts.

The activity in Main Engineering remained high with engineering personnel and operations officers working on fixing the ship. The naqia reactors were being carefully worked over, as were the plasma exchangers and the electro-plasma converters that provided energy to the rest of the ship.  
  
To the unpracticed eye, the scene could have seemed chaotic. But it was all under the control of an expert. Montgomery Scott had seen ships wrecked before, after all, even more totally than the crippling damage the _Aurora_ had endured at the hands of the Shadows. And he knew precisely how to keep things going and how to keep his crews from losing heart. He glanced over one section of the master control display for the ship and bellowed, "I want Etps and Drovima on th' Deck 24 power relay. Th' sooner we get that runnin' again, th' sooner we get th' hull stabilized an' th' sooner we can call home for help."  
  
After several moments Barnes walked in to Main Engineering. "We just got the forcefield generators back up on Deck 5," he said. "All hull breaches on Decks 1 through 14 are secured."  
  
"Good lad. An' th' repair systems?"  
  
Barnes shook his head. "Jarod and I looked them over, we'll need to completely rebuild four of the six replicators to bring that system back online."  
  
"Aye, I dinnae see how that would be any better," Scotty said. "I want t' finish stabilizin' th' hull integrity in case we need impulse power. Get who ye can an' see t' th' power relay on Deck 30 in Section F."  
  
"I'm on my way," Barnes pledged.  
  
Scott watched the lad walk away with a spring in his step and smiled softly. He knew what that twinkle in Barnes' eyes meant. And he was glad to see it. This wasn't a task to be endured, it was an engineer's challenge to be overcome, and it was good to see that Tom Barnes saw it as such. "Th' lad's makin' a fine engineer," Scott mumbled to himself. He then reminded himself that it was time to get back to work, so he redirected his attention to the master display.  
  
  
  
  
Being inside of the TARDIS couldn't stop Robert's feeling that something was wrong and that someone was watching them. He exchanged a glance with Meridina, who could feel that sense in him.  
  
"I was right," the Doctor declared. "Someone is pulling them into this world, and now we know where they are."  
  
The Doctor's mood was still jubilant. Animated. Robert found that curious. It was like he was a kid who'd received a toy he'd always wanted and was just giddy with the chance to play with it.  
  
"So we just do this, and this…" He was flipping switches on his control console. "...and we'll be at the source of this whole ghost business. _Allons-y_!" He went around the console to where Cat was watching in amazement. "Oh, I like that. _Allons-y!_ It just rolls off the tongue doesn't it? I'll have to use it more often, _allons-y_. And hopefully we'll meet someone named 'Alonso' and I can go, ' _Allons-y_ , Alonso'... why are you staring at me?"  
  
The Doctor had turned to face Rose, who didn't look quite so enthusiastic. When she had the Doctor's attention, Rose tilted her head to the side of the control chamber. "Mum's still on board."  
  
Everyone turned to see where Jackie Tyler was seated at the wall on the upper platform. She crossed her arms. "If we end up on Mars, I'll kill you."  
  
"Oh, I wouldn't worry about Mars," the Doctor said. He waved a hand toward Robert. "You've got a spaceship captain here, and I'm sure his ship can get to Mars like that." He snapped his fingers for emphasis.  
  
"Assuming the repairs go well," Robert mused.  
  
"Oh, I wouldn't doubt that…" The Doctor triggered the final control. The craft began to make its _VWORP_ noise once again. This time there was some form of turbulence in the flight, however, and the entire TARDIS shook enough that everyone was thrown off their feet. Caterina had to grab one of the support pillars. Robert dropped to his knee and Meridina, with great effort, remained standing as she was.  
  
When it was over Robert said, "Is everyone alright?"  
  
"That ride was different from the first," Caterina observed. "Why?"  
  
"Good question." The Doctor looked at his monitor and sighed. "I suppose we'll ask them."  
  
Everyone walked over to that side of the central console. On the screen, tinted part-blue, was an armed force of soldiers waiting with assault rifles and submachine guns raised. "Well, so much for the element of surprise," the Doctor noted. "Still, it lets us cut to the chase. Everyone, please stay here. You too, Rose. Look after your mother."  
  
"But, they've got guns," Rose protested as the Doctor approached the door.  
  
"And I am unarmed, so I'm much better, don't you think?" He looked back with a playful grin. "They might shoot me dead, but I'll have the moral high ground." With nothing further said, he slid out the door and held his hands up.  
  
Robert joined Cat and Meridina looking at the monitor while the Tylers remained at the TARDIS door. The armed soldiers outside did nothing at first. Nor did the Doctor.  
  
Then another figure stepped into the image. The woman was fairly attractive, and dressed in a way that showed she knew it, and she was applauding. The soldiers began applauding as well. Gradually the Doctor's hands lowered.  
  
"I don't suppose there's any way to get audio?" Robert asked.  
  
"I don't know." Caterina looked closely at the image and frowned. "Wait a moment. I know her. That's… what was her name… Yvonne Hartman. She's the woman who tried to take me and Angel away after we defeated that absorbing monster. She said she was with a group called 'Torchwood'."  
  
"I remember your report, and what Julia learned from UNIT," said Robert. "They take alien technology."  
  
The Doctor suddenly opened the TARDIS door and pulled Jackie outside. "This is Rose Tyler," they heard him say as the door closed.  
  
"I'm not sure I like what's going on," Robert said. "Meridina…"  
  
"We are unarmed," Meridina reminded him. "It is possible that we could defeat the soldiers right at the door, but I suspect there are more in this place."  
  
"My thought exactly." He frowned. "My other thought is that these people supposedly seize alien technology. And we're currently standing in a pretty advanced piece of the same…"  
  
  
  
  
"...I'm looking to trade her in, actually. Have anyone you can spare?"  
  
Jackie's hot glare at the Doctor went unremarked. So did his commentary.  
  
"I know she's not the only one with you, Doctor," was the woman's answer to his remark. "We saw another man enter the TARDIS through the London CCTV system. I'd like to speak with him."  
  
The Doctor let out an "Ahhh" at that. "Right then. One moment." He opened the TARDIS door just wide enough to stick his head in. His eyes locked on Robert and he used his left hand to make a "come here" gesture.  
  
Robert looked to Meridina. _Make sure Cat and Miss Tyler are safe, please. And when you can, get out and find out more about where we are. These people worry me.  
  
As they do me_. Meridina nodded.  
  
With that exchange done, Robert walked up to the TARDIS door and stepped out beside the Doctor. He looked Yvonne Hartman in the eye and said, "Ms. Yvonne Hartman, isn't it?"  
  
Yvonne smiled at him. "Well, I was wondering if I'd get this opportunity. We saw your ship arrive in high orbit. It looks like you were in a bit of trouble."  
  
"You could say that."  
  
"And the two Lieutenant Delgados?"  
  
"Off doing other work," he replied simply. "They told me what you did."  
  
"I never intended to harm them… Captain, is it? I say that because I saw the images of Commander Andreys speaking with UNIT and she had three gold stripes on her rank tab. You have a fourth."  
  
"Yes." Robert straightened his spine. "I'm Captain Robert Dale of the _Starship Aurora_."  
  
"And you're with the Doctor. Why is that?"  
  
"We were hoping to get his help with repairs." Robert glanced toward the Time Lord. "But this ghost thing happened and that became his priority. I came with him to observe for myself and make sure there's no threat to my ship."  
  
"I don't see how there would be," she said. "The field of effect doesn't reach into high orbit. Still, I'm quite pleased to see you as well, Captain. After I show the Doctor something, I would like to speak with you as well. But first, this way gentlemen, ma'am."  
  
The soldiers behind her parted ways to let the group pass. Once they left the storage area where the TARDIS had landed, Hartman began to speak. "We've always known you would find us eventually, Doctor. I'm happy that you came when you did."  
  
"I came over the ghosts. What's up with that, by the way?"  
  
"A side effect." Hartman went up to a double door. "We'll get to that in good time."  
  
Once they were through the door they were in a large storage bay. Boxes and crates were stacked and piled on pallets throughout the chamber. A saucer-shaped vessel was suspended on a gantry. "Welcome to Torchwood," Yvonne said.  
  
The Doctor's attention quickly focused on the saucer. "A Jaatha sun glider," he said. "Where did you get one?"  
  
"It came down over the Shetlands ten years ago. We picked it up and stripped it bare."  
  
"How did it crash?"  
  
"It didn't." Hartman grinned with satisfaction. "We shot it down."  
  
The Doctor gave her a very carefully-controlled look.  
  
"It violated our airspace," Yvonne said. "Around Torchwood, we have a motto. 'If it's alien, it's ours'."  
  
"I can't imagine the aliens are too happy with that thought," Robert said.  
  
"They're usually not in a condition to protest."  
  
"And what are you going to do if that changes? You could get your entire planet conquered."  
  
"You might be surprised, Captain, in how dangerous we can be to possible conquerors," Yvonne said. "Honestly, it's possible we could provide you more than you could provide us, if your Alliance ever makes the effort. At that moment a soldier stepped up and handed her a weapon. She held it toward the Doctor and asked, "Do you recognize this?"  
  
From the look on his face, he did. "It's a particle gun."  
  
"Thank you, Doctor. And thank you… Sebastian, wasn't it?"  
  
"Yes, ma'am," answered the soldier, who accepted the weapon.  
  
"Yes. Thank you Sebastian."  
  
"Yes ma'am."  
  
After he stepped away, Yvonne smiled at them. "I work to remember my people's names. We're a modern institution here at Torchwood, and that means I'm a people person."  
  
"This is the 21st Century, you're not supposed to have particle guns," the Doctor protested as the soldier walked off.  
  
"We're obligated to protect Britain from the alien hordes," replied Yvonne. She eyed Robert. "It's not like we have someone else to provide that protection."  
  
"Alliance involvement in this world is still being debated at the highest level," Robert replied. "But we have our own conflicts to worry about. That is, unless you want a fleet of Nazi German warships to show up in orbit."  
  
"Let them. We'll do to them what we did to the Sycorax this past Christmas," Yvonne declared. "I'm not worried about what technologies we should or shouldn't have. Torchwood's charter permits us to find and use alien technology to protect our world and to ensure the greatness of the British Empire. And that is what we will do."  
  
"What?" Jackie looked at Yvonne with bewilderment and perhaps a little disbelief. "But there's no more British Empire."  
  
"Not yet," Yvonne answered.  
  
"You sound like you would have preferred being born in Universe C502's late 20th Century," Robert remarked.  
  
"Oh?" Yvonne looked at him with curiosity. "What makes you say that?"  
  
"C5O2 has an earlier historical divergence point than other Earths," Robert answered. "Gavrilo Princip never existed and Mohandas Gandhi stuck with being a lawyer and became a proponent of Indian integration into Britain itself." Robert grinned wryly. "Of course, since India has a higher population, integration led to India becoming the center of the Empire. The capital was moved to New Delhi in 1996." Feeling a little mischievous, Robert activated his omnitool and found, to his gratitude, that his system had kept the relevant political information for offline viewing. He used the holographic interface to bring up an image of a middle-aged woman with dark bronze skin wearing a royal tiara and matching dress, flanked by an African man in a crisp business suit of blue and white. "These are the rulers of the British Stellar Union, as it's now known in that universe. This is Queen Geeta III and Prime Minister Adam Mwariama, an MP from Mombasa. Nice people, I found. I met them last year while we were negotiating their alliance against the Third Reich of S4W8."  
  
"The what of the what?" Jackie asked, utterly startled.  
  
Yvonne Hartman studied the image. "Well, it sounds like you're right," she said, smiling again. "I would have enjoyed living in that world instead. Hopefully my counterpart in that history served the Empire well." She gave Robert a bemused look.  
  
The Doctor turned away from something that looked like a magnifying glass or viewing device. "So what about these ghosts?"  
  
"A side effect. Don't worry, Doctor, there's an itinerary."  
  
"Hey, where are you taking that?" Jackie demanded. This caused Robert and Yvonne to look toward the middle of the room briefly, where the TARDIS was being carried by a flatbed vehicle through the chamber.  
  
"As I said, it's alien, so it's ours," Yvonne said happily.  
  
"You'll never get in there," the Doctor warned her amiably. "...what was the name again?"  
  
"Yvonne Hartman," was her reply. "And I could say the same for you, Doctor. Now, if you'll please follow me."  
  
She turned to lead them away, allowing Robert to steal a glimpse in time to see Rose and Cat peeking out of the TARDIS door. Satisfied they were okay, Robert followed the others.  
  
  
  
  
Rose shut the door and went for the Doctor's brown coat. Caterina watched her reach through the pockets and asked, "What are you doing?"  
  
"I'm going to find out what I can about these people," Rose replied.  
  
"And how do you intend to go unnoticed?" Meridina asked. "You will certainly be challenged for identification."  
  
"That's why I need this." Rose retrieved an ID fold that reminded Caterina of a passport, or a police officer's badge fold. Rose looked it over and grinned before holding it to Caterina. "See?"  
  
Cat blinked at the image. "It says you're a Captain assigned to Defense Command," she answered.  
  
Meridina, curious, stepped up and looked as well. "Interesting. I see a blank sheet."  
  
Rose frowned at that. "You mean it's not working on you?"  
  
"I can sense a mental component at work," Meridina stated. "Presumably it requires subconscious access to a mind. But I am trained against such manipulations, and besides, I am telepathic myself."  
  
"It's psychic paper," Rose said. "The TARDIS uses it to make someone see whatever they'd expect to think of as someone in charge. The Doctor uses it everywhere."  
  
"Quite useful," Meridina agreed.  
  
"We'll have to stay together," Rose said. "I can say you're with me."  
  
"I have my own ways of going unnoticed," Meridina replied. "And I sense something amiss that I should investigate. However, it is best if Caterina goes with you."  
  
"Right then," Rose said. "We just have to wait until they drop us off and leave us alone."  
  
  
  
  
After leaving the storage area, the three guests were led by Yvonne down a hall. "I've never heard of you people before," the Doctor said. "Despite all of my years coming and going from Earth."  
  
"That was the idea, Doctor," Yvonne answered. "After all, you're the enemy. It's stated in the Torchwood Charter of 1879, written and signed by Queen Victoria herself."  
  
"Torchwood… that was the name of the house in Scotland…"  
  
"...involving the Queen and a werewolf, yes."  
  
Robert blinked at that. "A _werewolf_?" he asked.  
  
"Well, the alien equivalent of one," the Doctor answered. "You can't tell me you haven't met bizarre-looking species before, Captain."  
  
"Well, no," Robert admitted. "The Asgard and Apexai both look like stereotypical 'Grey' aliens. When I met them, the Dorei reminded me of a species of video game elves. And I haven't been able to stomach Jello since I met the Gl'mulli."  
  
"If I may continue," Yvonne said, stopping to face them for the moment. "You're mentioned in our charter, Doctor. As an enemy."  
  
"If I'm an enemy, does that mean I'm a prisoner?" the Doctor asked.  
  
"Yes. But with very hospitable conditions."  
  
"Provided he cooperates, right?" Robert frowned. "I remember you were making it clear to Angel and Cat that if they didn't cooperate with you, you'd get nasty."  
  
"That was a bit of a bluff on my part," Yvonne answered. "As I've mentioned, I'm a people person, and I don't believe in torture or anything of the like. If anything, your officers would have wound up in a jail cell instead of comfortable surroundings."  
  
"I suppose I'm facing the same treatment?"  
  
"First things first, Captain. I have something I need to show the Doctor. Then we'll get to you." Yvonne turned and continued on, prompting them to follow. As they neared a secured door, she brought up her ID toward a scanner and said, "This is what we've been waiting to show you, Doctor. The source of the ghosts."  
  
After the door slid open they gained entry to a large chamber. A number of scientific instruments were gathered, all pointing toward a single object. A sphere, blacker than night, hung suspended in mid-air.  
  
The Doctor took an immediate interest. He whipped out the same set of flimsy-looking 3D glasses and approached the sphere. As he did, a man in a white lab coat approached. "Doctor, it's really you," he said breathlessly. "I'm Rajesh. I've been waiting…"  
  
Singh offered his hand, but the Doctor was more interested in the Sphere. So was Robert. His senses revolted at the presence of the Sphere. The Flow of Life itself seemed to avoid it like the plague. He had a deep feeling that it shouldn't exist. "What is that thing?" he murmured.  
  
"The Sphere is what started all of this," Yvonne explained. "It arrived and the ghosts followed."  
  
"What's wrong with it?" Robert could hear Jackie's voice waver. She could sense it was off as well, just with basic human senses. He started to feel sick himself.  
  
"It feels wrong, doesn't it?" Singh asked while the Doctor stepped ahead and stood underneath the sphere. "Nothing we have can detect it. It gives off no heat, no radiation, no emissions of any kind. It has no weight and no atomic mass. Every single instrument we have says it shouldn't exist."  
  
"It shouldn't," Robert asserted. He felt certain of that. He watched the Doctor begin to examine the Voidship with the 3D glasses.  
  
"But it's right there," Jackie said. "I can see it."  
  
"I know. Fascinating." Singh smiled. Robert could sense that he truly enjoyed the challenge of figuring out the Sphere.  
  
"It's a Void ship," the Doctor announced.  
  
"A what?" asked Yvonne. "What's a Void ship?"  
  
"Something that shouldn't exist." The Doctor pocketed his glasses again. "Closest thing I've ever seen to it were No Ships, but even they didn't go this far."  
  
Yvonne and Singh approached the stairway leading to the elevated platform where the Sphere was hovering. The Doctor met them there and sat on the stairs. "It's meant for traveling through the Void," he said. "No Ships would just dip a little into the Void, form a shroud of it to hide in, but this thing?" He wagged a finger back at it. "Complete immersion into the Void. Shouldn't be possible, but someone did it."  
  
"What's the Void?"  
  
"It's the space between dimensions." The Doctor gestured with his hands as he began to explain. "You see, we've got dimensions all around us, billions of parallel worlds and such piled together, and the Void is between them. It's a place of complete nothingness. Can you imagine that?"  
  
Robert thought back to dreams he'd had. Stars going out one by one until there was nothing but black. "I can," he murmured.  
  
"No light, no dark, no up, no down, no time, no _life_." A haunted look now showed on the Time Lord's face as he considered the nature of his subject. "My people called it the Void. The Eternals called it the Howling. But many people… they call it Hell."  
  
"So why would someone want to build a ship to travel in it?" Robert asked, trying not to let the Sphere's literal void in the energies around him make him more nauseated than he already was.  
  
"To explore. To escape." The Doctor gestured to the Sphere. "You could ride out eternity in there. Nothing could touch you. You could ride it through the end of this universe and a new Big Bang and straight into the next universe."  
  
"Then we were right." Hartman seemed quite pleased with herself. "There _is_ something inside." Her look grew intent. "How do we open it?"  
  
The Doctor jumped from where he was sitting. "You don't." An intensity appeared in his expression that belied the casual manner he'd been using to this point. "You send it back into Hell." After walking a distance from Yvonne and Singh, he turned and demanded, "Where did you get this? How did it get here?"  
  
"That's how it all started," Yvonne said. "It showed up and the ghosts followed afterward."  
  
"Show me."  
  
Yvonne nodded to the door. The Doctor didn't wait for her to catch up. He went ahead himself, beating everyone else there. He turned left into the hall outside. After Yvonne called out, "No, Doctor!" he reappeared, walking to the right.  
  
Just as they stepped out, Robert looked back to the Sphere. Every sense he had told him it was _wrong_. That there was something terribly wrong about it. He wished he knew how to remove it from existence.  
  
He was so distracted by those thoughts that he barely noticed when Jackie grabbed him by the arm and pulled him along.  
  
  
  
  
The _Aurora_ medbay was filled with casualties from the Shadow attack, casualties Leo and his medical team were working their way through with care and some speed. Leo had indeed worked his way down to the non-critical cases, such as burned hands. He was busy applying medigel solution to Locarno's hands now. "Tom spent hours bragging about the new fuse systems," Leo remarked. "What happened?"  
  
"The destabilization of a jump point," Locarno replied, shifting slightly on the biobed he was sitting up on. The blue-tinted gel on his hands was steadily absorbing into his skin. A soothing sensation blocked out the pain in his hands. "Cat said we lived by a few nanoseconds' margin of error. Talk about miracles."  
  
"Right." Leo ran his scanner over Locarno's hands. "Well, the medigel solution will heal your hands completely within a couple hours. Until then you should stay off duty. Don't use your hands until the medigel is completely absorbed and wait two hours before you look into returning to duty. And I mean that two hours, Nick."  
  
"Yeah yeah." Locarno set his hands down gently on his lap. "So, are you jumping ship too?"  
  
"You mean am I following Julia to the _Enterprise_?" Leo seemed to consider the question before shaking his head. "No, I don't think so."  
  
"You know, I've always wondered something," Locarno admitted. "You seven, well, eight, you were friends back before you found the Darglan Facility on your Earth, right?"  
  
"We were," Leo admitted. "Although Lucy wasn't really a part of our circle."  
  
"Right." Locarno shifted his arms to keep his hands steady. "Well, even then, you seem to have little groups. Robert and Julia have been best friends, maybe even soulmates, since they were what, three?"  
  
Leo nodded.  
  
"And Zachary became their friend a few years later. Then Tom Barnes became Zack's friend and in turn their friend. Then Robert started dating Angel in school and she and Cat entered the circle that way… right?"  
  
"Just about," Leo said. "Cat was tutoring Robert's little sister Susanna in science and a few other subjects. Susanna looked up to her. As for Rob and Angel, I actually think Julia met her first. Angel was taking advanced martial arts classes beside her when they were thirteen. They became sparring partners. Then a couple summers later Rob and Angel started their on-again off-again relationship."  
  
"So where do you enter into this?" asked Locarno.  
  
Leo smiled softly. "Well, my parents moved into the county because Dad was taking over the county hospital administration," he said. "I met Zack first. His mother was dying and my mother, she was a psychiatrist and counselor for the bereaved. She thought Zack could use a friend, and she thought I could. Back then…" Leo looked over the scanner again to see how the medigel was working. "...I was sometimes the only black kid in the classroom."  
  
"And that mattered?"  
  
For a moment Leo looked at Locarno with raised eyebrows. "Right," he said. "You 24th Century Federation people are color-blind. Yes, Nick, it mattered to quite a number of people on my world." Leo took another bit of gel and applied it to a particularly-burnt part of one of Locarno's fingers. "Although not just in Kansas. Growing up in Georgia, I'd already learned to keep my eyes off the white girls if I didn't want trouble with some of the kids or the parents." Leo's eyes grew distant as old, bad memories moved through his mind. "I was six when I was called a 'nigger' the first time."  
  
"Sorry," Locarno said. "In my time we tend to lump all of that into the 'Humanity before the Third World War was backward and cruel' curriculum."  
  
To that Leo snorted. "It must be nice to turn centuries of slavery and prejudice into a historical footnote." After chuckling Leo added, "But I won't complain. It's nice seeing Earths where kids can be kids and people don't give a damn about your skin color. It gives me hope our old Earth can become the same. Now, let me take one final scan…" Leo raised the scanner up again. "...and I'll have to send you on your way. I've got more patients to worry about."  
  
  
  
  
The TARDIS had stopped moving for a while before Rose dared step out. She peeked around for a moment and darted out of sight before returning with a lab coat. Meridina and Caterina stepped out with her. "You're going to stand out," Rose said to the two. "With those uniforms."  
  
Caterina and Meridina shed their uniform jackets in response, revealing a dark blue sleeveless shirt on Cat and a long-sleeved cream-white vest on Meridina. "You still stand out a bit," Rose said to Meridina.  
  
"That will not be an issue for me," said Meridina.  
  
"Were there any other lab coats?" Cat asked.  
  
"Afraid not," Rose answered. "Maybe we'll find one further in?"  
  
"I hope. And if you get me an example of a Torchwood ID, I might be able to make a copy with my omnitool's fabricator."  
  
"Don't worry, we'll just say you forgot yours if someone asks," Rose said. She made sure to close and secure the TARDIS door.  
  
Cat tested the door and saw it was locked shut. "What if we need to get back in?" Caterina asked. "Can you open it?"  
  
Rose grinned and held up a key. "Of course," she said. "Now, let's see what we can find out together, Cat."  
  
"I will attempt to remain in telepathic communication with you," Meridina said to Caterina. "I suspect communication by omnitool would be intercepted."  
  
"Yeah." Caterina nodded to Meridina. "Good luck."  
  
" _Mi rake sa swevyra iso_ ," Meridina said with a smile before slipping away.  
  
"'Me rocky saw swev…" Rose stopped herself. "Just what did she say?"  
  
"It's some Gersallian way of saying 'goodbye and good luck'," Caterina said. "I'm not sure what it means either. The translator doesn't really work with it."  
  
"Right. Neither does the TARDIS translator, it seems." Rose took Cat's arm. "Alright, the Doctor and your Captain are counting on us. Let's find out what's going on here."  
  
  
  
  
A part of Lucy felt guilty. She felt like she should be with Tom Barnes and Jarod and the others fixing the ship. She shouldn't be in her quarters looking over her broken lightsaber and Meridina's broken weapon, wondering how she was going to fix them with the machine shops trashed and her own tools woefully insufficient to fixing burnt out circuitry.  
  
Her spare parts were now spread out over her coffee table. Some were intact enough, but some of them were burnt out or otherwise broken by what had disrupted the rest of the ship. Her lightsaber and Meridina's lay disassembled with them. At this point, she couldn't even cobble together one functioning weapon from both. And the _lakesh_ es were, as she suspected, just as ruined. Moreso, in fact. The disruption field had damaged the memory metal itself.  
  
Lucy focused on the weapons with her senses, with her power, looking for a way to fix them. But even this approach now had problems. She kept being pulled toward that horrible feeling resonating through her. The feeling that something was dreadfully wrong. Something dangerous was lingering just beyond the metaphorical horizon, lingering and waiting to be sprung upon them. They were all in grave danger.  
  
Another sense rippled through Lucy. _Meridina_ was in grave danger. So were Robert and Caterina.  
  
And she couldn't help but feel that their survival depended upon her fixing this problem, and fixing it _soon_.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Aurora crew struggle to repair their crippled ship while helping the alien traveler known as the Doctor investigate a mysterious army of ghosts.

After a trip up several flights of stairs, Yvonne led Robert, the Doctor, and Jackie Tyler into a large chamber covered in white walls. To their right was an office behind office walls, with a view of the London skyline through the windows. To the left was the chamber proper, with a blank wall on the far side while the area near the office had several work stations and two levers on either side of the wall.  
  
Jackie went into the office to stare out the window while Yvonne led the Doctor toward the far end. Robert went to follow but stopped. He could feel something wrong rippling through him, not like with the Void Sphere but a more general threat. It was a sensation he was starting to tire off. His eyes passed briefly over a young African woman who wordlessly reassumed her station. Robert felt something off but couldn't localize it, not with everything else filling his new life energy-enabled senses with a feeling of warning.  
  
"The Sphere came through here," Yvonne said to the Doctor, the two now taking their final steps to the far wall. "A hole in the world." The Doctor pressed a hand against the wall. "It's not active at the moment. But when we fire particle engines at that exact spot, the breach opens up."  
  
"How did you even find it?"  
  
"We've been getting warning signs for years. A radar black spot, problems with aerial craft moving through the air here…" Yvonne stepped back with the Doctor, who reached for his 3D glasses again. "It was six hundred feet above sea level, so we had to build this tower to reach it. Torchwood Tower."  
  
The Doctor put the glasses on and examined the spot. "You built a skyscraper just to reach this spot? How much money do you lot have?"  
  
"Enough," was her coy answer.  
  
"Wait. I know where we are." Jackie looked back from the window. "This is Canary Wharf, isn't it? We're standing in Canary Wharf."  
  
The two walked back, passing Robert on the way. He continued to pay attention, if just for a way to deal with the wrongness and foreboding he felt.  
  
"That's how the public knows it," Yvonne stated. "But to all of those in the know, this is Torchwood Tower."  
  
The Doctor stepped past Robert and leaned against the door. "So you find the breach, you probe it, the Sphere comes through and leaves a hole in the fabric of reality 600 feet above London. Then, after thinking through what that means, what it could mean, you don't go 'Oh, we need to be careful with this, shouldn't we leave it alone? Should we play it safe?' No, you go 'Nah! Let's make it bigger! Nothing can possibly go wrong with that!'"  
  
"It's a massive source of energy," Yvonne answered. "If we can develop this and make it useable, it would end our dependence upon the Middle East's oil. Britain would be truly independent. There's nothing going wrong." Yvonne gestured toward the control come. "You can see for yourself. The next Ghost Shift is in two minutes."  
  
As Yvonne walked past the Doctor, he demanded, "Cancel it."  
  
"No."  
  
"I'm warning you, cancel it!" The Doctor followed her, a frustrated, nearly angry look on his face, and both emotions were present through Robert's senses.  
  
"Oh, just as the legends say…" Yvonne turned and glared at the Time Lord. "The Doctor, our alien overseer lording it over us. Assuming alien authority over the rights of man."  
  
The Doctor held his finger up. "Let me show you." He turned and re-entered the office while Yvonne and Robert watched quietly. Robert watched as the Doctor pulled out a blue light-tipped item and held it to one of the glass frames of Yvonne's office, specifically one of the Os in "Torchwood". The device's blue light lit up and an electronic whir filled the air, followed almost immediately by the sound of breaking glass. "So the Sphere comes through." A small hole now showed through the glass at the point where the blue light had touched it. Cracks branched out from this point in all directions to create a spider-web of said cracks in the surface of the window. "But when it came through, it damaged the world around it. It splintered the entire fabric of reality. The ghosts enter this world through the fault lines." The cracks in the glass were spreading and growing. "With the Human race wishing and helping them right along. But too many ghosts…" The Doctor tapped his finger against the cracked glass.  
  
The entire thing shattered and fell onto the floor in pieces.  
  
Yvonne considered the mess for a moment. Robert could sense she was calculating what the Doctor had said. But even before she spoke, he knew she hadn't been persuaded against it. "Then we'll be more careful," asserted Yvonne. "One minute to ghost shift. Positions, everyone."  
  
"After all that, you're still going to do it?!" Robert demanded. "What does it take to get you people to back off?"  
  
"I'm asking you, _please_ don't do this," the Doctor pleaded, approaching Yvonne again.  
  
"We've done this a thousand times."  
  
"Then stop at a thousand!"  
  
There was no wavering on the part of the Torchwood leader. "We're in control of the ghosts. This is perfectly safe. The levers can close the breach as easily as they open it."  
  
Robert looked around and considered if he could stop it directly. But there were three occupied work stations and the men and woman there were clearly not perturbed by what their boss had them doing. Perhaps he could handle the people doing the levers…?  
  
The staredown between Yvonne and the Doctor continued for several more seconds. And then, much to everyone's surprise, the Doctor's expression shifted to one of amiable friendliness, even a little enthusiasm. "Okay," he said brightly. He turned and walked back to the office.  
  
"Sorry?" was Yvonne's startled reaction.  
  
"Never mind. As you were." The Doctor grabbed a chair and pulled it up to the work stations before plopping into it. Jackie and Robert gave him confused looks.  
  
"What, is that it?"  
  
"I said my bit. Don't mind me." The Doctor smiled and looked at the nearest worker. "Do you have a cup of tea?"  
  
"Ghost shift in twenty seconds," said the young lady to Yvonne's right. Robert found her tone of voice to be oddly bored.  
  
"You can't stop us," Yvonne insisted.  
  
"I'm not trying," he answered, still grinning. "Can't wait to see it." He turned his head to where Jackie and Robert were still standing. "Pull up a chair Rose, Captain, let's enjoy the fireworks."  
  
"Ten seconds. Nine… eight…"  
  
The Doctor's expression remained confident and pleasant. His eyes met Yvonne's as the countdown continued. As it drew closer to the end, Robert felt the doubts begin to gnaw at Yvonne Hartman. For all of her rhetoric about the Doctor imposing himself upon Humanity, she knew that when it came down to it, he knew far more about these things than she did, or any of her scientists. She knew that they could be dreadfully, terribly wrong about the breach and about their experiments. That the Doctor might be right. And that if he was right and she acted anyway, she could destroy the very country she was trying to protect.  
  
"...three, two…"  
  
"Stop the shift," Yvonne ordered. "Stop it!"  
  
The activity in the room ceased.  
  
"Thank you," the Doctor said. His tone was earnest and low; he'd won, but he wasn't rubbing it in.  
  
"It doesn't hurt to have more intelligence available," Yvonne conceded. "But we will resume after you've made everythiing clearer."  
  
"I'm glad to be of service."  
  
Yvonne nodded before turning her head to face one of the subordinates. "Get someone to clean this up." She eyed the Doctor with humor. "I was told you like to make a mess." She walked past him and went to the threshold of her office before turning back. "And Captain Dale, don't think I've forgotten about you," she said. "I think the time's come to discuss matters."  
  
Robert answered her with a nod and approached the office with the others. As he did so, he tried to push away the feeling that things had not improved as he had thought they would have. There was still a danger here. But what?  
  
  
  
  
Rose and Caterina quietly stepped into what looked like a break room. It was, to Rose, a particularly posh one, with full scale vending machines for meals, tea and coffee makers, and stocks of the same for the workers to brew. A row of hangers on one end held white coats. Cat checked through them until she found one that fit. In the pocket she found a Torchwood ID badge. "Jennie Silversmith'," she read.  
  
"You can't use it, though, it has a photo of her," Rose pointed out.  
  
Cat checked the photo an agreed, Jennie's skin was almost ivory in its coloring, far too light for her to pass her own brown skin tone as a mere tan, and the hair and face were all wrong. "One moment," she said to rose while holding the badge up to her active omnitool. Her system scanned the badge completely and, with a few more taps, the omnitool's fabricators activated. Moments later the omnitool produced another physical ID. It had the same name, but Caterina's picture was now present.  
  
"Nice." Rose watched Caterina slip the coat on. "Do you have any ideas of where to start looking?"  
  
After checking to see if anybody was present in the room, Caterina held up her omnitool. A screen appeared within the blue holographic interface displaying basic coordinate data. "There's some sort of blank spot," Cat said. "It's not giving any returns on the system."  
  
"Sounds like a place to start," Rose agreed.  
  
  
  
  
On the _Aurora_ bridge Julia was sitting in the command chair, waiting for more reports. That was, to some degree, the worst part about this job. Having to wait for reports from subordinates before any action could be taken. Especially with the ship so roughly handled.  
  
Angel sat in Julia's chair. "You know, you could probably go grab a nap," she said. "Even with everyone working their asses off, Scotty's got us hours away from enough repairs for you to start giving orders."  
  
"I don't think it'd be appropriate," Julia answered. "The crew is working hard. The least I can do is be on hand if a command decision is needed."  
  
"Jarod and Scotty can make those decisions," Angel pointed out. When there was no response from Julia, she asked, "Are you going to be like this on the _Enterprise_?"  
  
"Probably."  
  
"Alright. But if you were in my seat and Rob was in yours, what would you be saying to him?"  
  
Julia appraised Angel with a slightly irritated look. Which, of course, told Angel Julia knew she'd been caught. "I'd be telling him to go rest until he was needed," Julia conceded.  
  
"Exactly." Angel smirked at her. "As usual, the mother hen doesn't listen to her own advice."  
  
"This is my place, though," Julia insisted. "I don't feel right anywhere else."  
  
"Of course you don't. You always have to be in charge."  
  
After another period of quiet, Julia asked, "Do you want to be my First Officer?"  
  
Angel stared at her in surprise. "You're not serious."  
  
"I am. Mostly," Julia replied. "You know how to argue with me and make me think."  
  
"I hit people and I shoot things. You want me to be responsible for the crew?"  
  
"I'm sure you're up for it."  
  
"And the fact I'm just a Lieutenant? You'd have to ask Maran to double-promote me, over a lot of other people. I'm sure that won't go over well."  
  
"Yeah, well…" Julia shrugged. "He told me to give him my choices, and you're already joining the _Enterprise_ as it is."  
  
"As a tactical officer." Angel shook her head. "I'm flattered, Julia, but I'm not interested in command. I don't know if I'll ever be."  
  
"Alright, fair enough." Julia smiled at her. "But you're not escaping the Second Officer post."  
  
"Thank you for the warning, Captain," Angel remarked. "Now, why don't you go get a meal from Robert's ready office replicator? They've got those going again. And you'll be a fifteen steps away from taking charge if we need you."  
  
Julia might have resisted if her stomach wasn't already growling. She nodded in defeat and stood up. "Alright, Lieutenant, you have the bridge. I'll be restoring my blood sugar levels to something appropriately human."  
  
Angel nodded and smiled, taking the command chair as Julia stepped into the ready office.  
  
  
  
  
While quiet reigned in the control area of the breach room, Yvonne leveled a look at Robert before leaning forward in her chair and against her table. "Now that I've had my discussion with the Doctor, Captain, I think it's time you and I talked."  
  
Robert settled into a seat and pushed away the anxiety he was still feeling about what was going on. "I've got nothing better to do at the moment," he admitted. "Given your track record, I imagine this is going to be a demand for technology."  
  
"I think 'demand' is a strong word." Yvonne set her hands together on the table. "It requires negotiating from a position of strength. Which, you must admit, I currently have."  
  
"We have laws about these things."  
  
"And I have a country to protect." Yvonne spent a moment in contemplation.  
  
"And that's how you'll justify anything you decide to do," Robert said, his tone making clear how low he thought of that. "I've seen your 'ends justify the means' type before, Hartman. You're not unique on that."  
  
"I would think not. But that's why people like me are where we are. We make the hard decisions so others don't have to." Yvonne appraised him with a knowing look. "I'm sure your Alliance has leaders with similar thoughts. But given I have other matters to attend to, Captain, let's dispense with the moralizing and get down to business. Your ship is helpless. You can't communicate with your people or they would have arrived by now. Other species could be en route, as we speak, to seize your ship, and I will not allow that to happen."  
  
"So what do you intend to do?" Robert demanded. "Take it yourself?"  
  
"The thought crossed my mind, yes," Yvonne admitted. 'But one of the drawbacks of maintaining an organization like Torchwood is that we don't always have the manpower to do everything we'd like. Your ship has well over a thousand crew on it. Seizing control of it with force won't work. And really, we don't have the means to use a ship of that size. We lack facilities. No, I've already decided not to take your ship. What I want instead is data on your technologies."  
  
"That's for the Alliance government to decide. I don't have that authority," Robert insisted.  
  
"If it will make you feel better, Captain, I can always resort to threats," Yvonne offered. "Then you can say you were compelled."  
  
"That's going the wrong way about it, isn't it?" asked Jackie Tyler. "Wouldn't it be better if these people were our friends?"  
  
"I'm not leaving our defense in their hands exclusively," Yvonne vowed. "It's better if we have the means to use the technology ourselves."  
  
"It's not that easy," Robert said. "We have open contacts with two pre-spaceflight Earths and it's not a smooth process. There's a lot of underlying science behind some of our technologies that simply can't be understood by your contemporary scientific knowledge. You need decades, centuries, of scientific knowledge to be introduced into your society before you can make proper use of that technology."  
  
"You might be surprised how much we know, Captain," Yvonne said.  
  
"Not as much as you think you do," the Doctor said, chiming in. "Given what you've been doing with that thing." He tilted his head toward the invisible breach at the far wall. With Yvonne's attention on him, the Doctor leaned forward in his chair. "You see, that's the problem I have with this place, Ms. Hartman. You're snatching all of these fun gadgets and toying with the forces of the universe without understanding what you're doing. You're like children who've come across a nuclear warhead with all sorts of blinking lights so you've decided you've found a nice new toy."  
  
Yvonne gave the Doctor a frustrated look. "You would say that, wouldn't you? You like to think of our species as children. Children needing your benevolent guidance. Well, Doctor, I'm sorry to inform you that the Human race, and the British people in particular, don't need your eternal parenting. We're ready to stand on our own."  
  
Robert thought the Doctor might take umbrage at that. That he'd get angry. But the look on his face was one of a man saddened by the choice of a close friend, a choice he knows will ruin those he cares for. "I've seen your species at your best and your worst," he said quietly. "I've seen you huddling in caves, afraid of fire. I've seen you expand across the universe and leave behind wonders that entire civilizations will adore." He looked to Robert. "I've even seen your kind create technologies worthy of the Time Lords, unlock the secrets of the universe and of planes of existence beyond our own, and move from one universe to another."  
  
There was something in the way he said it that made Robert realize that he wasn't talking about the Alliance. That prompted Robert to look at him with curiosity, curiosity the Doctor noted with a nod and a mental message of " _For another time_."  
  
"But you." The Doctor shook his head. "You're not them. You're not doing this to understand how the universe works. This is all about your petty little sense of tribalism. You don't appreciate the weight of what you're doing because it's all just a means to your end; placing your tribe of Humans above the others."  
  
"The British Empire has been one of the great powers of the world," Yvonne countered. "We've expanded knowledge of science and culture. We raised entire nations to a better standard of living."  
  
"I'm sure the Indians and the Zulus were quite thankful to you," Robert answered acidly.  
  
"Like the Native Americans are to your nation, Captain," Yvonne shot back. "The Empire may have gotten a few things wrong, but we never drove peoples off their lands to the scale you Americans did. You don't get to judge me and what I stand for."  
  
"Oh, you're absolutely right," Robert answered. His tone was solemn. "Many of my ancestors did drive innocent native nations off their lands. It's a crime Americans will always have to live with. But do you know what sets us apart, Ms. Hartman?"  
  
"What?"  
  
"Like you, I found myself with advanced alien technology beyond anything my world could offer," Robert said. "We could have become an American equivalent of Torchwood. We didn't. My friends and I, we used that technology to help _people_. To save people from tyrannical governments and criminal organizations and terrorists. We even opposed our own government when it wanted to take over." He gestured to the exit behind him. "Down there you have the technology to change the world. You could do so much more with what you've got here than… hoard it all for some plan to bring back the British Empire."  
  
For a moment Yvonne looked at him with a sort of bemused interest. "Tell me, Captain, do you practice this sort of speech-making? Stand in front of a mirror often?"  
  
"Oh, I dunno." The Doctor shrugged and gave Robert a half-grin. "I thought it was nice. I mean, a _little_ on the self-righteous side, but it worked well enough."  
  
Yvonne didn't bother giving the Doctor even the slightest glance. "What I wonder is how your superiors tolerate that sort of attitude," she said to Robert. "I can't imagine it's popular with your Admiralty. You sound like you got it from a children's show, or some sappy idealistic program on television. This is the real world, and it's time for you to be the adult and recognize how things work in it. We want access to your technology. That term's not changing. If you cooperate, I will gladly provide Torchwood personnel to any project you require to get your ship home. If you don't, well…" She leaned back in her chair. "I'd rather it didn't come to that, Captain. But the choice is yours."  
  
Robert answered by crossing his arms and glaring, saying nothing. His will met the stern will of Yvonne Hartman and, for the moment, neither blinked.  
  
  
  
  
The corridors of Torchwood's headquarters were not the most occupied Caterina had ever seen, leading her to believe they were in an especially sensitive area. She checked her omnitool scanner for nearby life signs and the blank spot she'd picked up and guided Rose around a corner. "What's it like?" she asked.  
  
Rose had heard the question often enough to guess the context. "You mean, what's it like traveling with the Doctor?"  
  
"Yes."  
  
"It's… amazing, really," said Rose. "All of those worlds, all of those alien things we've seen. I never imagined it possible before. It's like… I didn't know what I was missing until I actually started seeing it."  
  
"I never imagined I'd be jumping universes in a spaceship," Cat said. She grinned at remembering what it had felt like the first time. Being in space, seeing stars and alien planets up close and being able to learn so much… "Now I can't imagine anything else. And the Doctor can take you through time too. I mean, the Darglan mentioned the Time Lords in their databanks, they knew about their time travel capability. Has he taken you to see the Big Bang yet?"  
  
"Well, no," admitted Rose. "He sort of implied that would be a bit too dangerous. He did take me to see the Sun blow up once."  
  
"That's kind of depressing, isn't it?" asked Cat, now showing a bewildered face.  
  
"Not really. Humans had already gone to other planets. We've visited New Earth too." Rose stopped for a moment, prompting Cat to do the same. "You'd like to travel with him, wouldn't you?"  
  
"Well… yes," Caterina admitted. "I mean, maybe for a bit. I don't know if I can though, I have duties and stuff." Before Rose could bring up the obvious, Cat's eyes had already widened in realization. "Oh, right, he's a time traveler. We could travel around forever and I could be back in seconds from everyone else's perspective."  
  
"Right." Rose winced at a memory. "Just make sure he knows the time before you step out of the TARDIS. The first time he brought me back, he got the year wrong and it was a year after I left with him. Mum went bananas."  
  
"But couldn't he just… oh, wait, you saw your mother before you realized the wrong date, right?"  
  
Rose nodded.  
  
"So he couldn't or there would have been a paradox. Right." The conundrum solved, Caterina checked her scanner again. "You don't mind if I join you two, then? Assuming the Doctor offered and assuming the others let me…"  
  
Rose shrugged and gave a small grin in reply. "We've had others with us before. Even my ex-boyfriend Mickey traveled with us."  
  
"I bet that was awkward," Cat giggled. "Where is he now?"  
  
"Oh, he remained in a parallel Earth," Rose explained. "His counterpart died while we were there and he wanted to look after his Grans."  
  
"That's sweet of him… wait, parallel Earth?" Caterina gave Rose an intent look. "You traveled _fifth_ -dimensionally?"  
  
"Um… I guess?"  
  
Cat's eyes widened in shock. "No way."  
  
"Why's that so special? You jump universes all the time."  
  
"No, well yes, but…" For a moment Cat had to think on what she was going to say. "It's… Reality has a structure, and according to the O'palani-Fujisawa Theory of Multiversal Dimensional Structure, you've got parallel universes that are different on a fifth dimensional axis, and entirely different universes on the sixth dimensional axis."  
  
Rose blinked. "Yeah, I think the Doctor will enjoy traveling with you if you're always like this… just what does that mean? O'palani-Fujisawa what?"  
  
"You're talking about a parallel Earth, right? These kinds of alternate universes are known. The United Federation of Planets in Universe S5T3 have several recorded instances of fifth-dimensional travel as freak accidents," Cat said, her voice growing in excitement. "The thing about them is that they are linked in time. As in, if you're not actually time traveling, if you go from one parallel universe to the other the time will be the same. If it's your birthday and you go to seven different parallel universes from your own, it's your birthday in each… well, unless you don't exist in one of those parallel universes. And then you have to account for many worlds theory and the concept of new parallel universes being spawned all the time by decision points…" Caterina held up a hand when Rose went to speak. "I know, I'm getting off-topic, I'm sorry. Just… it's exciting, fifth dimensional encounters can be rare because Doctor O'palani's mathematical models indicate it has a far stronger… never mind, sorry. As I was saying, sixth dimensional universe jumping like we do, it doesn't have that same thing. The different universes have entirely different years. I mean, in Universe L2M1 it's October 2642, and it's also October 2263 in E5B1 and it's August 2372 in S5T3 and April 2865 in L4R1… And you've got different alien species in some cases…"  
  
"But always Humans?" Rose asked.  
  
"Well, yes and no. Universe R4M9 has no life on Earth. Scientists think a Gamma Ray Burst sterilized the planet around the time of the Neanderthals. And Universe F8Y3 has an Earth without Human life forms. We just never evolved or something." Cat shrugged. "Anyway, that's the difference. O'palani and Fujisawa have theorized that you may even have a sort of concentric circle, where parallel variants of each individual Universe match up with other variants, especially if Multiversal contact causes interaction and quantum decision points and your eyes are rolling again so I'm going to stop."  
  
"Yes," Rose said, "please do." She shook her head, grinning. Yes, the Doctor would quite enjoy showing Caterina around, she suspected.  
  
"It's for the best, because I think we're here," Cat revealed.  
  
The scans had led Caterina and Rose to a blast door across from a directional sign marked with "Torchwood Institute". "Our blank spot is definitely in here," Cat said. "But I'm not reading the others."  
  
"We should find out what's in here," Rose answered. "And see if they know where to find the Doctor and the others."  
  
Caterina looked over the door and then a scanner. "It looks like it's electronically opened with ID scans."  
  
"Ah. Well, that's good." Rose held the psychic paper up to the scanner. The door immediately began to slide open.  
  
"Wait, how did you do that?" Cat asked in a quiet hiss, putting her omnitool into standby mode.  
  
"Psychic paper works on a lot of things," Rose replied. "And let me do the talking. I doubt they'd have Yanks on staff."  
  
They walked in together and immediately felt the presence of something odd. They looked up and faced the Sphere. Immediately it felt wrong. They couldn't be sure what they were seeing and Caterina desperately wanted to scan it if she could get away with it. But since it was clear there were others in the room, she didn't dare.  
  
Her decision was justified when an English-accented voice asked, "Can I help you?"  
  
They turned and faced an older man with a brown complexion. Under the coat was a dress shirt with black and purple stripes with a purple bow tie - purple that immediately reminded Cat of Violeta - and dark trousers.  
  
"Oh…" Rose blinked and forced her eyes away from the sphere. "I was just…"  
  
He glanced back at the Sphere. Cat noticed his ID tag after he turned: Rajesh Singh was the name listed. Singh said, "Try not to look. It does that to everyone." While Rose forced her eyes away and took a moment to recover, he added, "What do you want?"  
  
"Oh, I… they sent me from personnel. They said some man had been taken prisoner, some sort of doctor? I'm just checking lines of communication. Did they tell you anything?"  
  
Caterina wondered if this was the right move, given Singh's clear reaction to mentioning the Doctor. "May I see your authorization?" he asked after a moment of silence.  
  
"Sure." Rose handed him the psychic paper.  
  
He looked it over. The moment Cat noticed the slight grin on his face, she could guess they were in trouble. "That's lucky," he said. "You see, everyone at Torchwood has at least a basic level of psychic training. And this is a blank piece of paper. You're a fake." He tapped his earpiece. "Seal the room. Call security." After this order was given. "And you, Miss… Silversmith?" His grin didn't change. "Why didn't you notice this was a fake?"  
  
Caterina swallowed. She tried to think of how Violeta's accent sounded and said, "Oh, I… I'm new here, she sounded like she knew what she was doing… what?"  
  
The grin on Singh turned into a smile. The smile of barely-restrained laughter. Rose gave Cat a bewildered, embarrassed look. "Just what kind of accent is that?" she asked.  
  
"Well, it's an English one," Caterina insisted.  
  
"You should go back to your accent coach," Singh remarked. "Besides, Jennie Silversmith is assigned to support logistics, she doesn't have clearance for this wing. You're a fake too." Singh looked back to another lab coated figure. "Samuel, can you check the door locks? They just walked right in."  
  
The other man turned. "Doing it now, sir." Caterina labeled him as African-American in her head before remembering that, duh, this wasn't America, and he'd be African...English? Anglo-African? How did that work in England? She couldn't remember.  
  
There was a bemused look on his face, though, and he was smiling as he stepped up and put his finger on his lips, then made a thumb's up with both hands.  
  
Caterina glanced toward Rose, who looked stunned.  
  
"Well, if you young ladies would like to take a seat?" Singh gestured toward his desk.  
  
Rose nodded in defeat. Caterina decided to go for broke since she figured Torchwood knew who she was anyway.. "Uh, well, is it okay if I scan the Sphere? You caught me so there's no point in hiding it, right?"  
  
Singh blinked at her and shrugged. "I suppose it won't hurt." Rose looked at Cat as if she was nuts.  
  
"Thank you," Cat said. She activated her omnitool and began to scan what her device insisted was… absolutely nothing.  
  
This was, of course, very intriguing, so she started more scans.  
  
  
  
  
Meridina moved quietly through the halls of Torchwood Tower. It was a natural sort of quiet, one that went unnoticed. Gentle footfalls that could be heard if close enough, but which would not seem out of place to those who could hear it.  
  
So far there had been no challenges. The people here had some resistance against mental powers, but the mental imprinting - Lucy called them "mind tricks" - was based on wills, not telepathic power, and Meridina had evaded suspicion while employing them.  
  
Where she was going, she didn't know. Meridina was trusting in her instincts, her connection to the universe, to lead her to where she needed to be. The pathways in question took her past offices, storage rooms, and down stairs toward one end of the building.  
  
As she drew closer to it, she could feel danger grow. There was something here. Cold, terrible, and with only the faintest sense of life to it.  
  
Meridina stepped around a corner and faced an area of the structure blocked off by plastic sheets. Signs indicated it was for authorized personnel only, and others referred to it as an "expansion project". Immediately Meridina thought something was off. Where were the workers? The equipment?  
  
She put her hand to the plastic. After several moments of debating what she was going to do, she took her first step through it.  
  
  
  
  
Neither Robert nor Yvonne broke off their quiet standoff. Yvonne did divert the subject ultimately by asking, "Doctor, do you think the Sphere was built by the ghosts, whoever they are?"  
  
The Doctor was, unlike the other two, completely laid back at this point, leaning back in a chair with his white tennis shoes propped onto the desk. "Must have," he said. "Aimed it at this dimension like a cannonball."  
  
A quick chirp came from Yvonne's earpiece. " _Yvonne, I think you should see this_ ," said Singh, which prompted Yvonne to look at her laptop screen. " _We've got visitors. I don't know where they've come from, but funnily enough, they must have arrived in the Tower about the same time as our other guests._ "  
  
Robert forced his expression to remain neutral. He could already imagine just who Singh was talking about. His concern was verified when she turned the laptop on her desk to face them, showing Rose and Cat with Singh. "Is she one of yours?" Yvonne asked the Doctor.  
  
The Doctor, with complete seriousness, shook his head. "Never seen her before in my life."  
  
""Good. Then we can have her shot."  
  
The Doctor let out a sigh and sat up, removing his feet from the desk. "Alright, it was worth a try." He nodded to the screen. "That's Rose Tyler."  
  
On the screen, Rose - looking rather dejected - said " _Sorry_."  
  
Yvonne blinked. "Then who's she?" Yvonne asked, indicating Jackie.  
  
"I'm her mother," Jackie replied.  
  
The look on Yvonne's face became curious. "Oh, you travel with her mother?"  
  
"He kidnapped me," Jackie insisted.  
  
The Doctor grimaced. "Please, when Torchwood decides to write my complete history, don't tell people I traveled through time and space with her mother."  
  
Jackie frowned at the Doctor as Yvonne let out a little, amused laugh. "Charming," Jackie said mockingly.  
  
"Please, I've got a reputation to uphold," the Doctor said.  
  
  
  
  
Meridina moved aside another piece of plastic. The feeling of life ahead remained, but it was very cold, very quiet. As if barely alive. It did not feel like someone wounded and in need of help. It felt… different. Wrong.  
  
But now another feeling was coming. She felt danger. Her life was in jeopardy, and said jeopardy was growing every moment. She pulled away another plastic sheet, and another, wondering just what was going on back here…  
  
And then she saw the machines. The blades. The terrible cutting saws and all of the other equipment.  
  
There was a metal thumping sound and the whine of servos as a figure shifted and turned toward her. It raised its arm and a weapon muzzle popped out.  
  
Meridina turned and ran for cover.  
  
The machine fired.  
  
  
  
  
In the office, Yvonne turned to Robert next. "I also recognize Lieutenant Delgado. As it stands now, Captain, I would be justified to have her shot as a spy."  
  
Robert frowned in reply. "You don't want to do that."  
  
"You're right. I don't. She seemed a bright enough young lady," Yvonne agreed. "But these rules exist for a reason, Captain. She's a foreign officer infiltrating a top secret facility of Great Britain."  
  
"And she wouldn't be here if your people weren't out to steal the TARDIS," Robert retorted. "Nor, frankly, would she be here if you weren't meddling with that damn dimensional…"  
  
A loud clunk sounded from the control chamber. Yvonne looked away from Robert and toward the control room. She stood up and walked toward the door. "Excuse me, everyone," she called out. "I thought I said stop the Ghost Shift. I haven't authorized another." When there was no reaction she asked, "Who started the program? I ordered you to stop." Yvonne pointed to where the levers were moving on their own. "Who's doing that? Step away from the monitors, everyone…"  
  
As Yvonne continued to issue orders that were ignored, the Doctor led Robert and Jackie out into the control room. "I order you to step away from your desks? Adi? Gareth? Matt? Stop at once!" Yvonne gestured to the others in the room. "Stop the levers!"  
  
As her personnel did so, the Doctor approached Adi. The Anglo-African woman was focused entirely on her console, as if oblivious to everything else. Robert focused on her and found that he couldn't feel anything, nothing indicating she was a thinking being. There was life, but that was it. And the sense of foreboding he'd felt before was escalating dramatically.  
  
The Doctor clicked his fingers in front of Adi's eyes. As he did so, Yvonne leaned over the desk on the other side of Adi and insisted, "Step away from the desk. Adi, step away!"  
  
"She can't hear you," the Doctor said, watching the activity on the computer screen. "They're overriding the system." He looked up to the far wall, now starting to glow white. "We're going into Ghost Shift."  
  
  
  
  
In the Sphere Room, Singh began to speak into his earpiece. "Yvonne, I thought the next Ghost Shift was canceled. What's going on?" When there was no response he repeated "Yvonne?"  
  
Caterina glanced from where she was reading the Sphere, or rather finding all the ways the Sphere didn't exist according to her scanners, even if it didn't exist in such a way that it was clear _something_ was there. "What is…"  
  
The entire room shuddered. Singh's head snapped up to face the Sphere. "It can't be," he said. He started to walk, at an increasing pace that bordered on jogging, toward the Sphere, prompting Rose and Samuel - whoever he was - to join him. Cat lingered behind, but her eyes were fixed on her scanners.  
  
She and Singh spoke at the same time. "It's _active_."  
  
  
  
  
In the control room, the Doctor was staring into Adi's earpiece, or at least the one in her left ear. It struck Robert as odd that she had one in each ear, and so did the other two. _Why didn't I notice that before?_ he wondered.  
  
"It's the earpiece controlling them," the Doctor said. His expression had lost the playfulness of earlier; he was all business, and quite tense. "I've seen this before." He reached into his pocket and removed what he'd referred to as his sonic screwdriver. "Sorry," he said to Adi. "I'm so sorry." He promptly pressed the tip of the screwdriver against the earpiece in Adi's right ear and activated it.  
  
Adi and the others all shrieked in absolute agony before collapsing at their work stations.  
  
"What happened? What did you just do?" asked Yvonne, now truly flustered.  
  
"I'm sorry, but they're dead," the Doctor explained.  
  
"You killed them?" Jackie asked, incredulous.  
  
"No, someone else did that long before I got there," the Doctor answered, now intent on the screen's contents. The rest of the room was being bathed in a white glow.  
  
"But you killed them!" Jackie repeated.  
  
"He didn't," Robert said. "They didn't feel alive before at all."  
  
"And how would you know if they did or not?" Jackie demanded of Robert.  
  
"Jackie, I haven't got time for this!" the Doctor declared.  
  
"What are those earpieces?" Yvonne asked.  
  
"Don't," was the only answer she got.  
  
"But they're standard comms devices, how do they control them?"  
  
"Trust me, you don't want to know."  
  
Despite the Doctor's pleas, Yvonne did want to know. She grabbed at the earpiece that had been in Adi's right ear. There was a sickening fluid sound and the earpiece came loose, a long tendril of wires coming from it. With disgust Yvonne dropped it on the desk. "Oh God, it goes inside their brain" she cried.  
  
"What about the Ghost Shift?" the Doctor asked.  
  
Yvonne checked the screen. "Ninety percent and still running." She went over to the Doctor and stood beside him, glancing at the intensifying white light at the far wall. "Can't you stop it?"  
  
"They're still controlling it," the Doctor answered. "They've hijacked the system."  
  
"Who's 'they'?"  
  
The Doctor pulled out his sonic screwdriver back out. "Might be a remote transmitter, but it's got to be close by. I can trace it." After fiddling with the screwdriver he activated it. "Jackie, stay here. Captain, the levers…"  
  
"Hold the levers, stop them!" insisted Yvonne.  
  
Robert nodded and walked up to between the desks. He breathed inward, focused, and brought his hands up as if gripping them. From within the power of his life surged and he reached out with it, gripping the levers with that power and holding them in place. He grunted. The mechanisms were powerful and were fighting him and the Torchwood personnel desperately trying to hold the levers in place.  
  
The Doctor and Yvonne ran from the control room.  
  
With everything else going on, nobody noticed the screen of Yvonne's laptop. A desperate Rajesh Singh's image showed on it, as well as a graphic of the Sphere and two words.  
  
**SPHERE ACTIVATED**.  
  
  
  
  
In the Sphere Room, yellow strobe lights were going off. "Yvonne, can you hear me?" Singh was frantic at the comms. "Yvonne, for God's sake, the Sphere is _active_. It's got mass, it's got weight, it's generating an electromagnetic field. _It exists._ "  
  
"I'm detecting spikes in the upper Groenitz-Hallen bands!" Cat added. "It's rippling through subspace as it manifests!"  
  
"What's that mean?" asked Rose.  
  
"The Sphere's fully immersing itself in our dimensional plane," Caterina answered. "I... I think it's _opening_."  
  
Behind them there was a thunking sound. "The door's sealed," Singh said, still talking into the comms. "An automatic quarantine. We're locked in!"  
  
He ran back toward the door. "Samuel", however, walked up to stand between Rose and Cat. "It's alright babe," he said. "We've beaten them before, we can beat them again. That's why I'm here. The fight goes on."  
  
Caterina looked at him in confusion. "Who are you? What are you?"  
  
"It's Mickey," Rose said, her eyes not moving from the Sphere.  
  
"Your ex?" asked Cat. "Wasn't he in still in that parallel world?"  
  
"I'm going to pretend I didn't hear the 'ex' part," Mickey answered.  
  
"Wait, the fight against what?" Rose asked.  
  
"What do you think?" was his answer, as the Sphere began to thud violently again, causing the room to shake.  
  
  
  
  
Julia had just about dozed off on the couch in the ready office when the door swished open. Angel stepped in and, given her lack of sarcastic remark, Julia knew it was a serious reason even as she barked, "Julia! We've got a problem!"  
  
Julia jumped from the couch and collected her thoughts as she followed Angel back onto the bridge. "Report!"  
  
Al-Rashad looked up from Sensors. "Commander, I'm getting a _massive_ energy spike from near the surface of the planet. The damage to the sensors is keeping me from triangulating an exact point, but it seems to be in a region of London."  
  
"Do we have communications to the Captain and the others?" she asked.  
  
"Not yet, ma'am," answered Tech Officer Matthews.  
  
"Damn." Julia sat in the command chair and did only what she could do: she waited..  
  
  
  
  
  
The Doctor led Yvonne through Torchwood, sonic screwdriver up and in his hands. As they passed two Torchwood soldiers Yvonne ordered them to follow.  
  
They came up to an area sectioned off with plastic. Plastic that now bore tears in some spots. "What's going on here?" the Doctor asked.  
  
"Building work. Just renovations," Yvonne said.  
  
He nodded and said, "You should go back."  
  
Yvonne flashed him a slight smirk and said, "Think again."  
  
With the soldiers following, both started moving through the plastic. After stepping through and around several sheets they stopped. The Doctor held the sonic screwdriver vertically and seemed to examine the light as it beeped slightly. Yvonne asked, "What's down here?"  
  
"Earpieces, earpods… this world is colliding with another. And I think I know which one."  
  
As he moved the upraised screwdriver to his right, metallic thunking sounds came through the plastic. Figures were becoming visible, vague silhouettes through the plastic.  
  
"What are they?" Yvonne asked, stunned and trying to hold back the feeling of terror building within her.  
  
"They came through first," said the Doctor. Metal hands thrust through the plastic and began slicing down it like a knife. "The advance guard."  
  
The cut plastic sheets were parted, and multiple robotic figures stomped into range, their servos continuing to give off the same metallic thunks as before.  
  
"Cybermen," the Doctor declared with something of a snarl. He grabbed Yvonne and ran back between the soldiers, who opened fire on the two columns of Cybermen forming up. The bullets bounced harmlessly off of their metal skins with angry sparks. Another Cybermen stepped into place and intercepted the Doctor and Yvonne, blocking their escape.  
  
  
  
  
As the Sphere Room continued to shake, Mickey continued his explanation. "We had them beaten but then they escaped," he said. "The Cybermen just vanished. They found their way to this world, but so did we."  
  
"Cybermen?" asked Caterina.  
  
"Nasty robots," Rose said. "Robots with human brains stuck full of wires and kept from feeling anything. They take people and rip them apart and put their brains into new Cybermen bodies."  
  
Caterina swallowed. "That sounds as bad as the Borg."  
  
"Borg?" Now it was Mickey's turn to sound confused.  
  
"Wait." Rose looked at Mickey with confusion. "The Doctor said it was impossible to travel between worlds."  
  
"Well, it wouldn't be the first time he was wrong," Mickey answered.  
  
"So do you know what's in the Sphere?" asked Cat.  
  
"The Cyber King, Cyber Leader, Emperor of the Cybermen." Mickey shrugged as he ended his speculation. "No one knows. Whoever it is, he's dead meat." Mickey grinned confidently.  
  
"It's good to see you," Rose said to him.  
  
Mickey nodded. "Yeah, it's good to see you, too."  
  
The Sphere shook and they continued to wait.  
  
  
  
  
Robert had gone down to his knees trying to hold the levers back. They weren't budging, and he couldn't tell if that was a good thing or not.  
  
Then a sense of incredible danger filled his being and distracted him. Robert lost his grip on the levers and slumped forward. Before he could muster himself to start again, the Doctor's voice came from behind. "Get away from the machines! Do what they say! Don't fight them!" Metal thunking accompanied his words.  
  
Robert turned in time to see the large metallic forms fill the control room. Silvery gray, with big Cs marked on their chests like a trademark, and handles above their heads and connected to the sides. Gun muzzles popped up on the forearms of two. He stayed low as red bursts of light struck out, striking screaming Torchwood personnel until they collapsed dead.  
  
"What are they?" Jackie asked the Doctor.  
  
One turned slightly to face her. Robert looked up in time to see the mouth light up with blue. " _We are the Cybermen_ ," it informed them. " _The Ghost Shift will be increased to one hundred percent._ " It promptly put its hand to the big C on its chest.  
  
The machines whined louder and the far wall lit up until it nearly blinded.  
  
And then black ghostly figures emerged from the wall.  
  
  
  
  
"The field of spatial disturbance is expanding, sir," al-Rashad reported. "It's.. it's bigger than ever before. It's going to overtake our position in five seconds."  
  
"All hands, Code Red," Julia ordered, although she wondered what good it would do.  
  
At the five second mark al-Rashad said, "Spatial disturbances forming on multiple decks." As she spoke, black ghostly figures began to appear on the bridge, walking into formation together.  
  
Julia's finger stabbed down on the command chair's comm key even as Angel went for the emergency bridge armory behind secondary tactical. "Bridge to all decks, standby to repel boarders! I repeat, possible intruder alert, stand by to repel boarders!"  
  
  
  
  
As the ghostly figures gathered, Jackie looked to the Doctor and asked, "But what do these Cybermen have to do with the ghosts?"  
  
"Don't you ever listen?" the Doctor asked in exasperation. "A footprint doesn't look like a boot."  
  
" _Achieving full transfer_ ," declared the lead Cyberman.  
  
Sitting up and feeling his head spin as every fiber of his being screamed in worry, Robert beat the Doctor to the answer by half a second. "They're Cybermen."  
  
The Doctor nodded. "All of the ghosts are Cybermen."  
  
And they all watched as the ghosts took solid form as Cybermen. Robert felt the horrible image go through his mind. They'd be everywhere. All across the planet. People weren't even afraid of them and wouldn't know something was wrong until the Cybermen took shape. How many people were dying right now? Is that what the Cybermen were here to do?  
  
The horrors of that thought were disrupted by another computer voice. " _Sphere activated_ ," the computer intoned, after which it began to repeat the line.  
  
 _The Sphere… oh no, Cat!_  
  
  
  
  
In the Sphere room, Mickey had just finished pulling off his lab coat and tossing away his Torchwood-issued earpiece. The Sphere was opening, a corona of white light shining from the top of the opening, and all Caterina could do was watch in awe. What was inside of it? What could make something so powerful?  
  
"I know what's in there and I'm ready for them," Mickey announced. "I've got just the thing." He dashed to the platform below the Sphere and reached under it. What he pulled out was a big rifle, larger than most assault weapons Caterina had seen. He returned to his place between her and Rose, and in front of Singh. "This is gonna blast them back to hell."  
  
"Samuel, what are you doing?" asked Singh, confused by his assistant's sudden bravado.  
  
"The name's Mickey. Mickey Smith," he corrected. "I'm defending the Earth." He gave the weapon a single cock, like it was a shotgun.  
  
Caterina looked from him to the Sphere, now completely open on top, and waited to see what her omnitool sensors told her about the occupants.  
  
  
  
  
The ghosts coalesced into metal figures on the _Aurora_ bridge, standing in a row like a military formation. They raised their arms in unison and pointed the weapon muzzles that emerged from their forearms toward Julia and the remaining bridge crew, pulse pistols readied and everyone in cover behind a console. " _Surrender and prepare for upgrade_ ," one demanded. " _Or you will be deleted._ "  
  
Julia had been planning a serious refusal, but before she could make it Angel popped out of cover and fired a shot. The blue pulse smashed into one of the robots and caused the big C on its chest to blacken. It toppled over. "Delete this!" Angel cried defiantly.  
  
The others opened fire.  
  
  
  
Lucy had heard the alert to repel boarders just as she finished re-assembling Meridina's lightsaber. Neither weapon was yet repaired. She still needed to work on them. That meant she would need her pulse pistol to help fight off whatever this invasion was.  
  
She turned to head to her bedroom and pick it up, just as metallic thunking came from that direction. A figure loomed in the doorway linking her living area to her bedroom, a large bipedal robot that seemed to have just a little biological life within it according to Lucy's senses. Cold, sterile life, but still technically life.  
  
The figure raised its arm toward her and a weapon muzzle emerged from the forearm's inner compartment.  
  
" _You will submit for upgrade_ ," the robot demanded. " _Or you will be deleted._ "  
  
  
  
  
In the control room, the Doctor stepped up to the lead Cyberman. "I don't understand," he barked. "The Cybermen don't have the technology to build a Void ship. That's way beyond you. How did you make that Sphere?"  
  
" _The Sphere is not ours._ "  
  
"What?" the Doctor asked, bewildered.  
  
" _The Sphere broke down the barriers between worlds_ ," the Cyber Leader replied, blue light appearing in its mouthpiece again as if to emphasize its synthetic nature. " _We only followed. Its origin is unknown._ "  
  
The Doctor posed the question Robert already had in his mind.  
  
"Then what's inside it?"  
  
  
  
  
The pounding of Caterina's heart had quickened and her stomach was twisting in anticipation as the Void Sphere finished opening. What was inside? What could be inside, and was it related to the builders, and was it friendly or was she about to die…?  
  
Figures finally emerged from within the blinding corona, black as silhouettes in their first moments in sight.  
  
Mickey perceptibly lowered his weapon a little. "That's not Cybermen," he said in surprise, while Rose looked on in abject surprise and fear.  
  
"Oh my God," was all Rose could manage.  
  
All of the blood drained from Caterina's face, which took on a mask of abject terror. Her heart stopped beating so fiercely. It nearly stopped entirely as a shape and a voice that belonged in her nightmares returned.  
  
" _Location: Earth. Life forms detected_ ," the electronic voice declared as the metal frame approached the ground in front of them. Lights on the metal body lit up as it spoke.  
  
" _Oh no_ ," Caterina squeaked. Her voice couldn't manage the scream she felt building up due to the terror gripping her, indeed, threatening to choke her. " _Not them_."  
  
" _Exterminate!_ " continued the lead Dalek.  
  
" _Exterminate!_ " echoed the other three Daleks.  
  
" ** _Exterminate!_** " proclaimed all four, in unison.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Aurora crew struggle to repair their crippled ship while helping the alien traveler known as the Doctor investigate a mysterious army of ghosts.

" _Exterminate! Exterminate!_ "  
  
" _Daleks!_ "  
  
Rose's shout quieted them. She stepped up toward the now-stationary Daleks. Behind her, Mickey held his weapon ready and Caterina was busy trying to regain some semblance of control from the terror of seeing her nightmares become real again.  
  
"You're called Daleks," Rose said to them. She pulled off her lab coat and threw it to the side. "Now how would a human know that? How would a Human know about the Daleks and the Time War?"  
  
The Daleks stared at her in silence.  
  
"If you want to find out how I know, you let me and my friends live. That's all I ask."  
  
Mickey nodded. "Yeah. I know this too. Time War."  
  
Singh caught on. "Me too."  
  
"And me. Time War. Time Lords. That stuff." Caterina's voice was strained.  
  
The lead Dalek, in a black casing instead of gold, kept its single electronic eye on Rose. " _You will be necessary_ ," it declared. The head swiveled until the blue eye was focused on Caterina. " _And you may be of further use._ " After these announcements the Dalek turned to the others. " _What is the status of the Genesis Ark?_ "  
  
" _Status: Hibernation_ ," replied another.  
  
" _Commence awakening_. _The Genesis Ark must be protected above all else._ "  
  
One of the Daleks turned toward the object that had followed them from the Sphere. Its plunger fitted against a half-sphere protruding from the surface of the device.  
  
With the Daleks no longer paying attention to them, Mickey asked Rose, "I thought you said all of the Daleks were dead."  
  
"Never mind that," Rose answered in a low voice. "What the hell is a 'Genesis Ark'?"  
  
  
  
There were times Robert regretted his abilities. It wasn't reasonable. It wasn't even fair, given how often they'd saved the things he cared for. But he couldn't help but tire of having his entire body seem to vibrate with anxiety at a nebulous danger, especially given the danger he was in now. All he could do was continue to lean against the wall and get his bearings while trying not to provoke the Cybermen into shooting them as they had the others.  
  
As his senses recovered, Robert sensed the extreme maternal worry and fear in Jackie Tyler. "What's down there?" she asked the Doctor, urgently. "She was with that Sphere. What's happened to Rose?"  
  
"I don't know," the Doctor answered from where he was leaning against the wall, apparently deep in thought.  
  
Jackie looked at him intently for a moment before clapping a hand over her mouth and sniffling. The Doctor reacted by stepping up to her. "I'll find her," he vowed. "I brought you here, I'll get you both out, you and your daughter."  
  
Jackie continued to sniffle and sob quietly with her eyes lowered.  
  
"Jackie, look at me. _Look at me_ ," he insisted. "I promise you. You'll both be safe. I give you my word."  
  
When this seemed to help her get control back, the Doctor turned back to Robert. "How are you holding up?"  
  
"A headache and a constant sense of incoming bad stuff. Despite all of this.." Robert gestured to the Cybermen. "...I think there's something _worse_ coming along."  
  
"That doesn't sound good. Anything in specific?"  
  
"I'm afraid not."  
  
The Cyberleader stomped past them and into Yvonne's office. " _You will order your Central Global Authority to surrender_ ," it said to Yvonne.  
  
"You should have done your research, then, because we don't _have_ a central authority," Yvonne retorted.  
  
" _You have one now. I will speak on all global wavelengths._ " The Cyberman turned toward the laptop and its built-in camera. " _This is for all humankind. The Cybermen now occupy every landmass on this planet. But you need not fear. Cybermen will remove fear. Cybermen will remove sex and class and color and creed. You will become identical. You will become like us_."  
  
Robert listened to what he said. The words were chilling, horrifying, in their ramifications, made perfectly clear by the emotionless electronic speech used to make them. It matched the cold flicker he felt inside of them, the last minor ember of life drawn from intact organic pieces. But the warmth of the Flow of Life would cease if the Cybermen prevailed. They promised nothing more than being cogs in a machine. A complete loss of everything that made beings truly alive.  
  
And the damndest thing, Robert imagined, was that the Cybermen were utterly convinced this was a _good_ thing. That they were doing Humanity a favor by forcing people to become robots.  
  
The Cyberleader turned its attention to Robert. " _You are the commander of the vessel in high orbit_ ," it stated.  
  
Robert glared at the machine. "I am," he said.  
  
" _You will instruct your crew to surrender and prepare for upgrade._ "  
  
"Well, let me think about that," Robert began, his voice thick with sarcasm. "Okay, I thought about it. _No_."  
  
The Cyberleader paused for a curious moment. " _If you do not cooperate, you and your crew will be deleted._ "  
  
Robert laughed in the Cyberleader's face with all of the humor of a man knowing he's got nothing to lose. "That's where you don't understand us, robot. We don't _want_ to be upgraded."  
  
" _Your stance is illogical. The Cybermen do not feel pain. We do not fear. We do not hunger. Our existence is the superior one,_ " boasted the machine. " _Your judgement is clouded by emotion. Emotions are a weakness._ "  
  
"Emotions are what make us Human."  
  
" _And that is why you must be upgraded._ "  
  
"It looks like that's going to be a tall order for you," the Doctor remarked. He was standing with Yvonne and Jackie looking out the window. The Cyberleader and Robert walked over to join them.  
  
Flames and smoke were rising from the streets and buildings of London. Explosions could be made out across the city.  
  
" _I ordered surrender_ ," protested the Cyberleader.  
  
The Doctor leveled an angry look at the Cyberleader. "They're not taking _instructions_ ," the Doctor spat. "Don't you understand? You're on every street! You're in their homes! You've got their _children!_ Of course they're going to fight!"  
  
There was no response to that. It gave Robert a moment to wonder how things were going for the others, and to wish he could make contact.  
  
  
  
  
The _Aurora_ bridge filled with spurts of pale red light and bursts of blue energy. The Cybermen remained lined up in complete disregard for the shots that Julia, Angel, and the others on the bridge were taking at them. Their return fire blackened consoles and sent sparks flying.  
  
"What the hell are these things?!" Angel demanded.  
  
Al-Rashad checked her omnitool. "They're robotic constructs, but I'm detecting organic brainwaves consistent with human brains within them!" She had to duck further to avoid a shot that would have hit her head otherwise.  
  
"And they don't seem to care how many of them we shoot," Julia added. The far door opened and more of the robots stepped out from the ready office. They already had their arms raised and were blasting away. "We need a better position, we're too spread out! Al-Rashad, is the conference lounge open?"  
  
The young science officer checked her omnitool again. "I'm not picking up their energy signature that way!"  
  
"Angel, see if you can get to the conference lounge!" She popped out from cover enough to fire shots that blasted the shoulder of one of the robots.  
  
Angel prepared to spring from cover and get to the doorway while uttering a quick prayer that she didn't get shot from behind. "Cover me!" she shouted as she jumped from her spot. She felt the heat of an enemy energy blast against the back of her neck from a razor-thin miss and reached for the door.  
  
Savage pain shot up her left hip and side. Angel cried out as she toppled into the door. "I'm hit!" she shouted. "But… I'm at the door!"  
  
Technical Officer Matthews popped from cover and shot the nearest of the enemy, thinning their numbers further. He got back into cover behind the secondary tactical station to avoid retaliation fire before squeezing off another shot that damaged the leg of another. "Commander, Lieutenant, I'll cover you!" he shouted.  
  
Julia nodded and then looked to al-Rashad. "You first!"  
  
The light brown skin on the young woman's face had turned pale with fear. But she nodded nevertheless. When she jumped from cover Julia and Matthews left their safety as well, laying down fire as fast as their pulse pistols let them. The one Cyberman who sought to shoot al-Rashad took a hit to the head from Matthews and went down.  
  
Al-Rashad made it to the door. The angle of the alcove entranceway gave her cover. She opened the door and, with effort, pulled Angel inside.  
  
Julia went next, firing off several wild shots that hit the bridge walls and controls more than it hit the foe. A shot scorched the wall beside her from a near-hit that sent a spark into her forehead, lightly burning her skin. She made it to the door alcove and knelt down, pistol. "Now Matthews!" she shouted before moving out of cover and opening fire.  
  
Matthews jumped from his cover and opened fire. His shots were wild, as he was more concerned with escape, but one did hit the head of one of the enemy bots, which collapsed. Julia leaned out from the alcove and fired around Matthews, nailing another one.  
  
There were three left. All were firing toward them. A shot went over Julia's head. Another nearly singed her arm.  
  
The third struck Matthews in the back.  
  
He cried out while pale red energy crackled over his torso. It seemed to make his body seize up, after which he fell over. He fell right at the opening of the alcove. Julia grabbed his arm and dragged him into cover with her. "Matthews?"  
  
He didn't answer. Al-Rashad appeared at the door and scanned him. "Sorry, Commander," she said. "He's gone."  
  
"Dammit." Julia activated her omnitool. "Main Computer, this is Commander Andreys. Commence complete bridge lockdown, Authorization Code Andreys Gamma Tango Sierra Three Six Six."  
  
" _Authorization code accepted_ ," the computer's feminine voice stated. " _Lockdown commencing_."  
  
Satisfied that the robot boarders couldn't take control of the _Aurora_ on the bridge, Julia quickly turned her attention to their situation. Matthews was dead. That left her, al-Rashad, and Angel, who had been hit too. "How bad is it, Lieutenant?" she asked al-Rashad. "I mean, Lieutenant Delgado's injury?"  
  
"It damn hurts," Angel groused, preempting al-Rashad's answer.  
  
"Damage to her left hip muscles and nearby tissues."  
  
"That thing shot me in the ass!" Angel complained. Loudly.  
  
"You're doing better than poor Matthews," Julia pointed out. "Can you shoot?"  
  
"Prop me against the wall, and yeah," Angel said.  
  
"I've got a better idea. Watch the door." Julia motioned to al-Rashad, who joined her at the table. They both grunted with effort as they got the leverage and position necessary to put the conference lounge table on its side, exposing the holotank projector internals that were fixed underneath it. Julia went and lifted Angel to her feet, letting Angel's left arm settle over her neck. She brought her to the other side of the table where al-Rashad was already checking her pulse pistol. "Eighty percent power," she said.  
  
After setting Angel down and kneeling beside her, Julia checked her own. "Sixty percent."  
  
"Sixty-five," Angel verified. She grimaced from pain. "This is worse than that time I pulled my leg muscle."  
  
"Don't you miss that being the worst thing to deal with?"  
  
There was no time to answer Angel's remark. The door swished open and the enemy robots began to enter.  
  
  
  
  
Lucy sensed the shot coming and struck first. Her hand came up and a wave of energy forced the shot upward, scorching the ceiling of her quarters. She raised the other hand and another, more powerful wave of energy sent the intruder flying back into her bedroom. She reached to the table and retrieved both lightsabers before going for the door.  
  
At first the corridors seemed clear. But she rounded a corner and found two more of the machines stepping out of a set of quarters. They turned and noticed her. " _Surrender or_ …"  
  
Before they could finish the ultimatum, Lucy swept her arm and sent them flying back into the quarters they'd just vacated. Lucy went to the door and brought her omnitool up. She interfaced it with the locking system and activated an emergency lock to keep them in. "Just what the hell are these things?" she wondered aloud. She used the comm key on the omnitool and said, "Lucero to Jarod. What's going on?"  
  
" _The entire ship's been boarded by robots, and they really don't seem to like us_ ," Jarod replied. " _I'm in Science Lab 1 with a security team. We're secure for the moment. Can you join us?_ "  
  
Lucy nearly answered yes. But she stopped at the feeling inside, the sense that she needed to be somewhere else. It was the same as before; she needed to go down to Earth, or Meridina and the others could die. "Sorry, but no," she said. "Jarod, I'm sorry, but I need to go planetside."  
  
" _Why?_ "  
  
"Because… if I don't, I think Robert and Cat and Meridina are dead," she replied. "Don't ask me how to explain it. It's one of those life force things and it's always so damned vague."  
  
There was a moment of silence. " _I don't know how you'll get down. The transporters are offline, and even if one worked I have all operators with the repair crews. And given the direct hit the main shuttlebay and the hanger deck took, I'm not sure you'll find a shuttle_."  
  
"And I don't think I want to try and cross the entire ship to get to the secondary shuttlebay either," Lucy said. She thought about the problem. How to get down to the planet with no transporters and no shuttles or runabouts? What else was… _oh_.  
  
She grinned when she continued, "I think I know what'll work," she said. "Remind me to thank Julia later."  
  
" _For what?_ "  
  
"Her insistence on running evacuation drills all the damn time," Lucy replied before she continued on down the corridor, following a route that said drills had caused her to memorize.  
  
  
  
  
In Main Engineering Scotty and Barnes could only watch, along with a handful of the other engineers, as other engineers and crewmembers engaged in a firefight with the robotic invaders. The protective forcefield for the main engineering controls had snapped into place when Scotty had given the order. Occasionally pale red energy slammed into the field, creating blue distortion from it holding the blast back.  
  
"The damn forcefield's still at eighty percent," Barnes said from his station. "I can't divert any more Goddamned power to it."  
  
"Aye, lad. Nae use worryin' about it." Scotty checked another of the consoles. "Better t' figure out how t' help deal with these metal scunners."  
  
"The repairs to our power systems have brought back most of the internal sensors." Barnes checked something. An idea was forming in his head. "We can at least track the bastards."  
  
"Relay it tae security an' th' Marines. They'll handle these bloody things."  
  
"Yeah." Barnes looked at him and grinned. "But maybe we can give them some help."  
  
  
  
  
Leo looked up from where he was treating a plasma burn on an injured Alakin crewman. The sound of thunking metal came through the medbay door, caused by what he guessed were the source of Julia's intruder alert.  
  
Two security officers opened fire on the initial robot to enter, blasting it until its head and chest were one big blackened mass. Another came in behind the first, firing. One of the security officers went down with a cry before the other finished the second intruder off. A third intruder immediately shot the remaining guard and entered the medbay, a weapon muzzle prominently displayed on its arm.  
  
Three more entered and took up positions with weapons ready. A fourth stepped in and looked around. " _Who is in command here?_ "  
  
Leo swallowed and nodded. "I am. Doctor Leo Gillam, Chief Medical Officer."  
  
The figure turned slightly. " _I am the designate Cyberleader present. You will assist in conversion of this medical facility into a cyber-conversion facility._ "  
  
"And that is?" Leo had the idea he wouldn't like the answer.  
  
" _It will permit the upgrading of this vessel's crew into Cybermen units._ "  
  
"You mean you're going to turn us into… you."  
  
" _That is correct_."  
  
Leo knew immediately he needed to buy time. "Why?"  
  
" _To remove the weakness of emotion from the species. All individuals will be upgraded into Cybermen._ "  
  
"And what if we don't want to be 'upgraded'."  
  
" _Hostile elements will be deleted._ "  
  
Leo got the meaning of that term rather easily. "So let you turn us into emotionless, soulless robots, or you kill us?"  
  
" _That is correct. We must save you from yourselves_."  
  
There would be no arguing with the robot. All Leo could do was play for time and hope help arrived to end this nightmare.  
  
  
  
  
A nightmare. Caterina was living in a nightmare. That was the thought that dominated her, making her unable to think of or do anything else. Indeed, it seemed like doing _anything_ but standing there would immediately cause her death.  
  
Thinking of dying brought tears to her eyes. What would happen to Angel? And now she had a girlfriend to think about, someone who would be hurt if something happened to her. There were so many things they hadn't gotten to do together, so many plans…  
  
There were so many things she hadn't been able to do yet.  
  
The black-plated Dalek turned to them again. " _Which of you is the least important?_ " it asked.  
  
Rose responded with "What's that supposed to mean?"  
  
" _Which of you is the least important?_ "  
  
"No. We don't work like that. None of us are least important," Rose answered.  
  
" _Designate the least important!_ " demanded the Dalek.  
  
"This is my responsibility," said Singh.  
  
Rose shook her head at him. "No, don't…!"  
  
But she couldn't stop him. Singh stepped up to the Dalek and said, "I represent the Torchwood Institute. Anything you need, you come through me. Leave these three alone."  
  
The Dalek shook. " _You will kneel._ "  
  
Singh showed confusion at that. "What for?"  
  
The response was a prompt " _Kneel!_ "  
  
For a moment Singh seemed to hesitate, if only out of confusion and perhaps a little pride. But he turned and knelt before the black-cased Dalek, now at his back.  
  
" _The Daleks need information about current Earth history._ "  
  
"Yes, well, I can give you a certain amount of intelligence," Singh said. "But I will not jeopardize homeland security..."  
  
" _Speech is not necessary!_ " declared the Dalek, which now drew closer to him. " _We will extract brainwaves_." Two of the other Daleks did the same.  
  
As the plunger-like arms of all three approached him, Singh realized just what he'd set himself up for. "Don't," he pleaded. "I'll tell you everything you need. No, don't…!"  
  
The black devices stretched and encompassed much of his head. Singh could do nothing but scream as the Daleks began to tear information from his brain. Mickey nearly made an instinctive lunge to stop them just for Rose to hold him back and embrace him tightly. Caterina let out a low, terrified cry of horror, and could only watch as Dr. Singh met his end at the "hands" of the Daleks.  
  
When the Daleks finally pulled back, Singh had been reduced to a dried out husk. His remained collapsed to the floor with a dust cloud. " _His mind spoke of a second species invading Earth. Infected by the superstition of ghosts._ "  
  
"You didn't need to kill him!" Rose shouted.  
  
The Dalek swiveled its head and looked at her. " _Neither did we need him alive!_ " The Dalek swiveled its head back to face one of the golden ones. " _Dalek Thay, investigate outside._ "  
  
" _I obey._ " The Dalek slid across the floor and left the chamber.  
  
  
  
  
In the breach control room, the Cyberleader watched a live video feed from two of the Cybermen, sent to investigate the Sphere Chamber. Robert and the others were watching as well. He thought he recognized the corridor as one of those that Yvonne had led them through between the Sphere Chamber and the breach control room.  
  
A form moved through a door at the far end of the video. As it came into view Robert's eyes widened. His heart pounded in surprise and raw fear. " _Crap_ ," he swore. " _Them_." When the others looked at him, he added, "It's a Dalek."  
  
The Doctor nodded but said nothing. He was busy watching.  
  
" _Identify yourselves!_ " the Dalek demanded.  
  
" _You will identify first_ ," one of the Cybermen countered.  
  
" _State your identity!_ "  
  
" _You will identify first._ "  
  
" _Identify!_ "  
  
" _You will identify first_."  
  
" _Your behavior is illogical, you will modify_ ," ordered one of the Cybermen.  
  
" _Daleks do not take orders!_ "  
  
" _You have identified as Daleks_."  
  
Despite everything, Robert couldn't help but smirk at the Dalek walking right into that, ending the standoff between the two. With the looming sense of threat around them Robert had trouble focusing his power, but he made himself do so after taking a breath. He had to know if Cat was alive, or Meridina for that matter.  
  
"Rose told me about the Daleks, she was terrified of them," Jackie murmured to the Doctor. There was a quiver in her voice when she asked, "What have they done to her, Doctor? Is she dead?"  
  
The Doctor turned to her. "Phone," he whispered.  
  
"What?"  
  
" _Phone_ ," he repeated, the whisper more strained this time.  
  
Bewildered, Jackie handed the Doctor her cell phone. He used the speed dial to call Rose's phone. When there was an answer on the other side he raised his head slightly. "She answered. She's alive. But why haven't they killed her?"  
  
Jackie glared at him. "Well, don't complain about it."  
  
"They must need her for something." The Doctor continued to listen intently.  
  
As he did so, Robert thought he could feel Caterina and Meridina. It was difficult to single them out given the way his abilities seemed to be set to "Something is terribly wrong!" mode, as if the threat that was being presented was so severe that the sense of it was tying up the rest of his special senses.  
  
"'Genesis Ark?'" the Doctor said, curious.  
  
Meanwhile the Cybermen-Dalek argument continued. " _Our species are similar, though your design is inelegant._ "  
  
" _Daleks have no concept of elegance_ ," the Dalek said mockingly, as if the very idea was beneath them.  
  
" _This is obvious_. _But consider. Our technologies are compatible. Cyberman plus Daleks. Together we could upgrade the Universe._ "  
  
" _You propose an alliance?_ "  
  
Robert could feel the Doctor's worry at that. He knew he was; having these two groups together would make the nightmare even worse.  
  
" _This is correct_."  
  
The Dalek's response was immediate. " _Request denied._ "  
  
" _Hostile elements will be deleted._ " The Cybermen began to fire on the Dalek.  
  
The shots did… precisely nothing. Just as the Daleks that invaded the Facility three years ago, the Dalek was protected by an energy shield that absorbed the shots without difficulty. " _Exterminate!_ " the Dalek retorted. The light blue blasts it fired took out the Cybermen in the hall and, in the process, ended the visual link. The laptop screen went blank.  
  
"Thank heaven for small favors," Robert sighed. He had thought, for a moment, that this was why he felt that something even worse was coming. But now… it had to be something else.  
  
But what?  
  
  
  
  
Rose, Mickey, and Caterina had watched the brief negotiation between the Daleks and Cybermen and the inevitable result of said negotiation. Now the image of a Cyberman appeared on the screen that had been used before. " _Be warned, Daleks, you have declared war upon the Cybermen,_ " stated the robot.  
  
" _This is not war_ ," the lead Dalek answered. " _This is pest control._ "  
  
" _There are five million Cybermen. How many are you?_ "  
  
" _Four_."  
  
" _You would destroy the Cybermen with four Daleks?_ "  
  
" _We would destroy the Cybermen with_ one _Dalek_ ," boasted the lead Dalek. " _You are superior in only one respect_." Behind the Cyberleader, Rose and the others noticed the Doctor moving in the background.  
  
" _What is that?_ " asked the Cyberleader.  
  
" _You are better at dying_. _Raise communications barrier!_ "  
  
The call ended. But just after the screen disengaged, one of the gold Daleks cried, " _Wait! Rewind image by nine rels!_ ". The screen responded, bringing back the Cyberleader and showing the form in the background. " _Identify grid Seven Gamma Flame._ "  
  
The image zoomed in on the Doctor.  
  
" _This male registers as an enemy._ "  
  
The lead Dalek turned abruptly and faced the three prisoners. " _The female's heartbeat has increased_ ," it said, directing its attention to Rose.  
  
Mickey snorted. "Tell me about it."  
  
" _Identify him!_ "  
  
A bemused little grin appeared on Rose's face. "Alright then, if you really want to know." She leaned in a little toward the Dalek. "That's the Doctor."  
  
The four Daleks literally backed away from Rose, as if she might personally destroy them in the next second. That surprised Caterina. She'd known that the Doctor was their enemy, but these Daleks didn't seem ready to chase him down like the ones who had invaded the Facility had. They seemed _afraid_ of him.  
  
Rose laid it on further. "Five million Cybermen, that's easy. One Doctor? Now you're scared."  
  
For the first time since the Daleks had emerged from the Sphere, Cat entertained the thought they might actually survive this. That the Doctor and the others would actually save them.  
  
  
  
  
The Cyberleader had taken a minute or so to process the realization that the conquest of Earth had just run into a major complication. " _Quarantine the Sphere Chamber_ ," it finally ordered. " _Begin emergency upgrades. Start with these personnel._ "  
  
One of the Cybermen grabbed Robert's arm. The others were seized as well. The grip was too much for him to throw off easily. Even if he mustered the focus to throw the one holding him, he would likely be pulled along too. Or would have his arm torn off. The machines dragged them out of the office. "You can't do this!" Yvonne shouted. "We've surrendered! _We've surrendered!_ "  
  
" _Keep this male._ " The Cyberleader indicated the Doctor. " _His adrenaline levels suggest that he has vital Dalek information._ "  
  
" _Doctor, you can't let them do this!"_ Jackie cried. " _Stop them!"_  
  
"I'll only help you if you let them go!" the Doctor yelled. "Let them go!"  
  
But the Cybermen didn't. "You promised!" Jackie insisted. "You gave your word!"  
  
"Jackie, don't fight them! I'll get you out of this…!"  
  
As they were being dragged down the hall, Yvonne kept saying, "We're prisoners! You can't do this!"  
  
"They don't care," Robert pointed out. "This is what they're going to do to everyone they don't kill."  
  
"He promised!" Jackie wailed. "He said he'd stop them!"  
  
"I'm sure he's going to try, but he can't do anything." Robert's mind raced. If anything, the immediate problem was helping him concentrate despite the constant distraction of his abilities sensing danger. Instead he was starting to consider a potentially dangerous tactic, if only he could get his other arm free.  
  
Their procession was coming to a turn in the halls when it came to a sudden stop. Said stop was explained by the sound of clanging metal, a Cyberman weapon firing… and then same Cyberman flying out of the hall and hitting the ground. Without its arms.  
  
A smile came to Robert's face. He held out his free arm toward the Cyberman holding Jackie. He didn't know if he could summon the strength through his power to rip the offending arm off, but he did manage to hold the other arm in place and prevent it from firing.  
  
This meant that when Meridina rounded the corner, she only had two Cybermen to worry about. Concentration formed on her features and her hands pulled apart. The arms gripping Yvonne were torn free from the Cyberman's body. It seemed to look at them helplessly.  
  
Robert's captor raised its arm and readied its weapon. At that range, the Cyberman had every reason to expect its shots to hit. But Meridina was too fast for it and evaded the first volley. She made a pulling motion again and this time Robert was freed. He turned and concentrated everything on the free arm of Jackie's captor, still struggling against his power. This held the last armed Cyberman in check for the second it took for Meridina to focus on it and yank its arms free as well.  
  
"Meridina, good to see you," Robert said.  
  
"Likewise, Robert. Mrs. Tyler."  
  
"Who is she?" Yvonne stared at them. "What… how did she do that?"  
  
"Ms. Hartman, this is my chief of security, Meridina," Robert said. "She's a Gersallian and trained in special arts using the power of life energy. She's taught me some." Robert looked Meridina's way next. "This is Yvonne Hartman, the director of Torchwood. Or whatever is left of it now that the Cybermen are converting people."  
  
"I have been evading these automatons," Meridina said. "Although I do sense a flicker of life within them."  
  
"According to the Doctor, they're actually people who had their brains cut from their bodies and installed into robotic bodies with systems to suppress any emotions."  
  
Meridina frowned at Robert's explanation. "An abomination. We must do something about them."  
  
"We may need weapons first," Robert pointed out. "I didn't bring down my pulse pistol."  
  
"The Cybermen will have overrun main storage," Yvonne said. "But there might be something in the testing labs."  
  
"You lead the way, then." Robert gestured down the hall. "Because I don't want those tin-plated tyrants carving up people. Not if we can stop it."  
  
"It would be helpful if we restored communications with the ship," Meridina said. "Perhaps Lucy has had a chance to repair our weapons."  
  
Robert frowned at that. "I have a feeling Lucy and the others are busy with their own problems, Meridina."  
  
  
  
  
Evading the robotic invaders on the _Aurora_ hadn't been easy. Lucy had been forced to outrun a couple of them and activate an internal bulkhead to escape, which had the unpleasant side effect that she couldn't backtrack.  
  
But now she was at her destination. A series of panels lined the wall. You didn't find these panels on most of the ship's corridor walls, and for good reason.  
  
Each led to an escape pod.  
  
Which was, apparently, why the robots had sent three of their number to guard it. They turned to face her and raised their weapons in unison.  
  
"Crap!" Lucy went back around the corner. She heard the thunking noise of the machines walking. They were pursuing. And with the ones behind her and the sealed bulkhead, she had limited options on getting away.  
  
_Alright. I guess I'll have to fight_.  
  
First taking in a breath to steel herself and focus, Lucy rounded the corner again and grabbed one of the pursuers with her power. She pulled the robot into the other one. They collided with a metal clang and hit the wall. The third one, which had remained behind, brought its weapon up and fired. Lucy felt the shot coming and barely evaded it. She swung out with an arm and gripped attacker's gun arm with her power. With a single yank and a lot of energy, she ripped the offending limb off. She turned said limb and, with a thought, discharged the capacitor's last-remaining shot into the former owner's headpiece. Pale red energy sizzled over the head until it literally exploded in a messy burst of metal bits and white fluid.  
  
Lucy was just far enough away to avoid getting hit by any of the resulting debris. She made a disgusted face at the remains before feeling a sense of danger, or rather, one beyond the constant background feeling she'd had since they jumped into this universe. The Cybermen behind her were getting back up. She went to the nearest panel and activated the touch display. A couple of button presses let her enter her ID code to activate the escape pod without a general evacuation alert. The panel to her left opened downward as if to form a ramp. She stepped up into it and gave a quick push of energy to knock the lead robot back into his buddy, buying her the last second she needed to secure herself in the escape pod. She went to the small piloting control at the front of it and triggered the release sequence, adding the safety harness as an afterthought. G-forces pulled against her as the hexagonal-shaped pod launched from the surface of the _Aurora_ 's primary hull.  
  
Lucy drew in a breath and focused on Meridina and Robert. She could sense them even from orbit, their life energies burning bright compared to others. She could also sense another presence, not quite the same, but with its own feel. Presumably this 'Doctor' being. WIth that connection guiding her, Lucy entered coordinates into the escape pod's navigation system. Thrusters fired and dipped the pod into a de-orbiting course to land in London.  
  
_I'm coming_ , _Meridina_ , she thought. Now all she had to do was finish fixing their weapons. She had a feeling they would be needed.  
  
  
  
  
In Science Lab 1, Jarod had formed an ad hoc operations command for the ship with the help of Commander Kane, now with his Marines, and Lieutenant Phryne Richmond, an Australian woman who served as Meridina's second-in-command and lead investigator in ship security. She was lithe in build as opposed to built out, which made the rumor that she had body-tossed Angel out of the ring once very interesting. Her bob-cut short hair was black in color, matched with a vibrant green for her eye color and a complexion that Jarod figured "porcelain" did justice to.  
  
The two were looking over a holographic image of the ship provided by the central holotank. Battle damage still showed on the likeness, including the remaining hull breaches, but of greater importance was the invasion of the robotic force that had initially appeared as "ghosts". "Security Team C just finished a sweep of Deck 6," said Richmond. Her accent was more on the refined side. "Security Team G is encountering heavy resistance on Deck 11."  
  
"What about Deck 12?" Jarod tried not to make his worry clear. "Internal sensors confirm they're in the medbay."  
  
"I haven't been able to get a team there yet. Given the numbers we're seeing, I'm going to send Team C to Deck 11 first to help G secure it." Richmond met Jarod's eyes. "Unless you object?"  
  
Jarod almost did, but stopped himself. Throwing a single security team into an area full of hostiles was too great a risk. It was better to concentrate force as much as possible. "And Teams A and B?"  
  
"They're still fighting their way to the bridge with one of Commander Kane's platoons."  
  
Jarod tapped a key. "Jarod to Kane."  
  
There wasn't a response right away. When it came, it was joined by the sounds of weapons fire. " _Kane here. I'm a little busy, Commander._ "  
  
"I understand. But we're showing intruders in medbay on the sensors. More than a single security team can handle. The Marines are better equipped to handle this."  
  
" _I'm still clearing up Deck 16 and the backup fusion reactor, and I've got to get to Engineering_ ," he answered. " _But I'll detach Barker's squad to hit the area. Can you back them up?_ "  
  
"Team E," Richmond said. "They're nearly done with Deck 10. They're mostly made up of armed crew right now, but with the Marines leading the way, they should work."  
  
"Team E will meet you on Deck 12, Section F," Jarod told Kane.  
  
Jarod looked back to the screen. Although the arrival of the intruders had left everything chaotic initially, Commander Andreys' timely "repel boarders" order had gotten the crew in motion just in time to avoid being taken completely by surprise. Now they were at least making progress, slowly recovering the ship sector by sector, deck by deck.  
  
_But how many of us are going to die in this fight? If we can come up with some way to clear them out faster._ The thought of getting the transporters back online came to him, but that would require work on key power relays that the repair crews couldn't get to yet. Not with those decks still unsecure.  
  
A tone came from his omnitool. Jarod hit the flashing blue light above the back of his left hand to accept an audio/visual signal, which he relayed to the main display in the lab with a touch of a key.  
  
One of the robotic invaders dominated the screen. In the background he could see more holding Leo, Doctor Singh, and a few other personnel. " _Attention. I am the designated Cyberleader responsible for the upgrade of this vessel's crew_. _We are the Cybermen. We are not your enemy. We have come to upgrade all life forms into Cybermen. All distinctions that divide you - species, sex, color, creed, class - will be removed. You will no longer know fear or pain. You will be achieve perfection from the weakness of emotion..._ "  
  
" _Are you getting this?_ " asked Kane.  
  
"We are," Jarod confirmed.  
  
Meanwhile the Cyberleader continued. " _...not come to harm you. Only hostile elements will be deleted._ "  
  
Jarod hit a key to open his end of the audio length. But before he could speak, another visual channel kicked in. Julia's face appeared. She was clearly crouched behind a toppled table - the conference lounge's table, Jarod thought - and had the disheveled look of someone who had been in the middle of a fight. Or was in the middle of the fight, as the sounds of Cybermen energy fire was coming from nearby, answered by pulse pistol fire. " _This is Commander Julia Andreys, currently in command of the Alliance_ Starship Aurora," she said. " _I am addressing these 'Cybermen' and their leader. My crew and I have absolutely no intention of becoming Cybermen. We will not submit to your forces._ "  
  
" _You are allowing emotion to control you. It is not logical to refuse upgrade_."  
  
" _Oh, I think it's very logical_ ," she countered.  
  
"Because what you're talking about is another word for 'slave'," Jarod added. "You're talking about taking away everything that makes us unique beings and turning us into drones."  
  
" _Aye, it's a load o' bollocks if ye ask me_ ," added Scotty. " _We'd rather fight, ye damn scunners._ "  
  
" _Your response proves your inability to judge without emotion. You will understand your error once you are upgraded_."  
  
" _You mean once you mentally program us inside your damn machine bodies_ , " Kane growled. " _Well, Cybermen, my Marines and shipmates and I say no. Come and get us if you can, you damn bucket of bolts. You won't be the first tin-plated monsters we've dealt with._ "  
  
" _We're going to take Option Number 3, Cyberleader_ ," Julia stated.  
  
" _There is no third option. All will be upgraded. Hostile elements will be deleted._ "  
  
" _The third option is that we blow you all to hell_ ," Julia countered. " _And that's the one we're taking_. _Andreys out._ "  
  
Julia cut the communication. Jarod did as well.  
  
"Stirring," said Richmond. "Maybe I should look into transferring to _Enterprise_."  
  
"Good luck with that," Jarod said. "Meanwhile, let's see what else we can do."  
  
  
  
  
In the conference lounge, Angel fired off another series of shots. The Cybermen had to come through the door, and they had tried several occasions so far. It was costing them, but on the other hand, it wouldn't for long for the simple reason that the three ladies were running out of charge on their weapons. "I'm down to twenty percent," said Angel.  
  
"Fifteen," added al-Rashad.  
  
Julia checked hers. "Eighteen percent. So, let's make all of the shots count, right? No telling when we'll get more clips."  
  
Indeed, all threw knew that the only way out they could be sure of was if someone hit the Cybermen from behind. And nobody could be sure of when that might happen.  
  
  
  
  
In the Sphere Chamber the Daleks were all busy working on the Genesis Ark with their plunger arms. They seemed to be ignoring Cat, Rose, and Mickey, but there was no guarantee they would if the three tried to escape.  
  
Caterina, for her part, was still trying to get control back. She barely noticed when Rose touched her arm. "Are you alright?" she asked.  
  
"No." Caterina shook her head. "I'm not."  
  
"You've faced the Daleks before, haven't you?"  
  
Caterina nodded. "It… it was _my_ fault," she said, tears flowing down her eyes. "It was about three years ago… we weren't the Alliance back then, we were just a bunch of people living in a Darglan Facility trying to do good things. We surveyed your universe for the first time and found an artifact, some sort of pod. I… I was curious. I brought it back home to the Facility. I shouldn't have… I should've been more careful. Somehow my science team opened it and… _Oh God_ …" Cat sobbed as she thought about Simon and the others being shot dead by the Daleks. "...they came out. A whole bunch of them. They… they killed my friends. My colleagues. They killed Captain Farmer. They almost killed me. My sister barely survived the fight. And… they made us blow up our home."  
  
Rose nodded gently. "I understand you're scared. They're terrifying. Just don't let them see it. They'll kill you if you're no use to them."  
  
"If only there was some way out of here…" Caterina looked around. "If the _Aurora_ was repaired enough to beam us out…"  
  
Mickey stepped up, holding what looked like a large yellow button with a metal frame around it. "I could transport out," he said. "But I'm not leaving you here."  
  
"Somehow I think that's meant more for me," Rose remarked. "You follow me anywhere. Just what did I do to you all those years ago?"  
  
Mickey put the device away. "Guess I'm just stupid," he said.  
  
Rose took his hands and gave him a meaningful look. "You're the bravest man I ever met.  
  
"What about the Doctor?"  
  
That prompted Rose to roll her eyes for a moment. "Oh, alright. Bravest Human."  
  
Mickey grinned a little. "Well, I can't think what the Daleks need with me, I'm nothing to them."  
  
"Maybe there is something," Rose said. "When I first met a Dalek, it was dying. But then I touched it and it became fully active again."  
  
"How does that work?" Caterina asked. She found that confusing. Not to mention the weird thought of touching one of the monsters.  
  
Given Mickey was also looking at her in curiosity, Rose continued explaining. "The Doctor said that when you travel in time, in the TARDIS, you soak up this sort of background radiation. It's completely harmless, it's just there. But during the Time War, the Daleks evolved to use this stuff as a power supply."  
  
"I love it when you talk technical," Mickey teased.  
  
"Shut up," Rose retorted playfully. "But if the Daleks have got something inside this thing that needs waking up…"  
  
"They need you," Mickey said.  
  
Rose shook her head slightly. "You've traveled through time, either one of us would do."  
  
"What about me?" Caterina asked. "I was in the TARDIS too." She brought her omnitool online and scanned.  
  
"I don't know," said Rose. "You traveled inside the TARDIS, but not through time. It might not be on you."  
  
"And I can't tell either way," Caterina said. "I'm not reading anything on you, or on me."  
  
"But why would they build something they can't use themselves?"  
  
"Maybe they stole the technology?" Cat asked as Rose shook her head.  
  
" _Correct_."  
  
All three turned to face the Daleks. The black-armored Dalek spoke again. " _The Ark is not of Dalek design._ "  
  
"Then who built it?" asked Rose.  
  
" _The Time Lords_ ," the Dalek revealed. " _This is all that survives of their homeworld._ "  
  
"But what's inside?" Caterina asked.  
  
" _The future_ ," was the only answer the Dalek gave.  
  
A thought came to Caterina. A thought that scared her in more ways than one, a thought she didn't even want to say aloud. But fear and curiosity combined to compel her to ask. "And what about me?" She looked at the black-plated Dalek. "If you didn't need me, you'd have killed me like you did that poor man. What do you want with me?"  
  
" _Our sensors detect traces of energy from exposure to interuniversal vortex_ ," said the Dalek. " _You will be necessary._ "  
  
"For what?" Caterina asked, almost demanded, from the Dalek. "What will I be necessary for?"  
  
" _The future_ ," was the only reply she got.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Aurora crew struggle to repair their crippled ship while helping the alien traveler known as the Doctor investigate a mysterious army of ghosts.

The Cybermen in the medbay had moved into the OR theaters. Only the Cyberleader and a few guards remained in the receiving ward, where the injured had been brought with the medical staff. Leo busied himself by working on them as best as he could. A young crewwoman who had nearly died from exposure to vacuum rested on one of the biobeds. He triple-checked her vitals and the condition of her damaged organs. He wanted to get her back into the critical ward. "Some of my patients will die if we don't get them back into full treatment," he informed the Cyberleader. "They're not resisting you, they can't. So they're not 'hostile elements' to be 'deleted'."  
  
" _Scans indicate they will live long enough to undergo upgrade_ ," the Cyberleader responded. " _Further care is not necessary_."  
  
Leo frowned at the machine. "What made you?" he asked. "What gave you the right to decide these things for us? To decide we have to become like you?"  
  
" _We are perfection. Upgrade will provide immortality. Upgrade will remove weakness. Without emotions, you will recognize we are correct._ "  
  
"And what about free will? What about making our decisions for ourselves?"  
  
" _You cannot do so rationally due to emotions. Cybermen will remove the emotions. And you will see we are correct._ "  
  
Leo held a finger to its face. "But that's the catch, isn't it? Your entire argument is 'we're right _because_ we're right'. You're like children who have been taught to think something is true and assume it has to be, so you go around and reprogram everyone's minds to agree with you because you _have_ to be right. But that's not logic. It's ego."  
  
The Cyberleader responded with all of the conviction of the fanatic. " _You will recognize our perfection when you are upgraded._ "  
  
Before Leo could pursue his argument further, another Cyberman emerged from the OR. " _Cyber-conversion chamber is approaching completion. Matter-replication technology allows for rapid upgrade_."  
  
" _Prepare these personnel for upgrade_ ," said the Cyberleader.  
  
"No, dammit! No, you don't have that right!" Leo pointed a quivering finger in the machine's face. "My shipmates will stop you. They'll put you down."  
  
" _Unlikely. Cyber-conversion process will permit rapid provision of reinforcements. Suppression of hostile elements will be achieved_ ," the Cyberleader predicted confidently. He tromped away, signaling that the conversation was over as far as he was concerned.  
  
_Hurry up, guys_ , Leo thought.  
  
And then a desperate idea crossed his mind, prompting him to check his omnitool.  
  
  
  
  
Yvonne Hartman led the others to a room that looked like an armory and firing range all in one. Targets, some sporting burn marks or missing pieces (or completely in pieces already) adorned one wall and another secondary area. Another section of wall was lined with various firearm-looking weapons. "Most of these are still in testing," Yvonne explained. "I can't promise they'll be entirely reliable."  
  
Robert reached for a large black rifle-like gun. It had, to his confusion, a shotgun-style sliding piece to cock the weapon. "What's this?"  
  
Yvonne looked it over. "Electro-plasma rifle," she said. "It's got an overheating problem we were close to solving."  
  
Robert nodded. "Alright. I'll be careful."  
  
Yvonne took a similar weapon. "Particle gun," she said. She looked to Meridina, who was studying the weapons. "See something you like?"  
  
"No," she replied. "These weapons are not my specialty. Given the circumstances, however…" Meridina picked up two of the pistols.  
  
"I believe those fire plasma bolts," said Yvonne.  
  
"Very well."  
  
Eyes turned toward Jackie, who was clearly nervous about picking any of them. She finally, with great apparent reluctance, selected one weapon to look over. It was a dainty little pistol of a weapon. "What's this one do?" she asked Yvonne, holding it toward them with little gun safety regard.  
  
The result was Yvonne snapping, "Put that back before you kill us all!"  
  
Jackie nearly jumped at the shout. She gingerly returned the weapon. Yvonnne picked out one for her and handed it over. "This is an electromagnetic generator gun. It knocked out electronics. It might take out the Cybermen."  
  
"That's just our first problem," Robert reminded them all. "We still need to fight the Daleks when we're done."  
  
"One problem at a time, Captain. One problem…"  
  
Before Yvonne could finish that line, Jackie's cell phone rang. She picked it up and answered it. "Hello?!"  
  
" _You're alive!_ " came from the other end.  
  
"Doctor!"  
  
" _Yes. What happened?"_  
  
"The other lady who came from that ship saved us," Jackie explained.  
  
" _Good. Where are you all then?_ "  
  
"Well, we're getting things to defend ourselves with. Weapons. They want to stop the Cybermen from hurting people."  
  
" _Put the phone on speaker mode, please._ "  
  
Jackie pressed the appropriate button. " _It's good to hear you're all intact._ "  
  
"Doctor, did you get away from the Cybermen?" Robert asked.  
  
" _Yes. With a little help. I've got a plan to get Rose and Caterina away from the Daleks. If you're going after the cyber-conversion machines, wait until I give the signal._ "  
  
"Why?" asked Yvonne. "What are you doing?"  
  
" _I don't have time to explain. But I need the Cybermen to cooperate and they'll not be in a listening mood if you've blown up their converter."_  
  
Robert's first instinct was to decline. The Doctor was asking them to ignore the people being fed into the machine. But that deep sense he felt told him this was how it had to go. The Daleks were enough of a threat that they had to be the focus.  
  
"Alright, we'll wait," Robert agreed.  
  
  
  
  
A short time later, three Cybermen in one of the tower halls witnessed a sheet of white material being hung into their view from around the corner of a corridor. "Sorry, no white flag," said the Doctor as he stepped into view. "Only had a sheet of A4. It had to do."  
  
The three immediately raised their arms and presented weapons. " _Do you surrender?_ " one asked.  
  
"I surrender, unto you…" The Doctor stepped up to place his face within inches of the lead Cyberman's head. "...a _very_ good idea."  
  
  
  
  
The Cybermen in Main Engineering were, for the moment, mostly victorious. The security personnel and engineers outside of the protective forcefield had been forced to flee by the numbers they faced, leaving unconscious or dead crew across engineering. Only those who were with Scotty and Barnes inside of the forcefield were safe. For the moment, anyway.  
  
Now, however, the Cybermen were pouring fire into the forcefield to get at them. An East Asian engineer, Ensign Yi, was currently responsible for checking the forcefield's strength. "Forcefield strength down to thirty percent," he said.  
  
"They're gettin' better," Scotty mumbled while he and Barnes looked over the system diagram on the wall. "I cannae be sure this plan o' yers will work, Tom. Ye're talkin' about shifting power through systems in a way that's never been tried."  
  
"I know," Barnes said. "But we don't have a lot of choices. We've got to get these things off the ship."  
  
"But if ye're wrong, if we cannae draw power through safely, we'll burn through th' systems an' be right back where we started." Despite his protest, it was clear to all that Scott was impressed by his protege's plan.  
  
"That's why I haven't already tried. Well, that, and because I'll need Jarod's help." Barnes activated his omnitool and began transmitting a message.  
  
  
  
  
In Science Lab 1 Jarod heard the tone from his omnitool and checked it. It was in binary, and once he finished deciphering that it was in a partially-ciphered code. Translating that left a code message. After thinking on it for a couple seconds, Jarod looked to Richmond. "I need to get to the nearest Transporter Station," he said.  
  
"We haven't secured any of those," she replied.  
  
"I know." Jarod tapped several keys on his omnitool. Its interface now showed multiple bars beginning and growing to completion. "I just uploaded some self-defense applications into my omnitool. Between them and the gun, I should make it." Jarod held up the pulse pistol provided to him.  
  
Richmond gave him an intent look. "Lieutenant Seldayiv!"  
  
A Dorei woman stepped up from the various officers and personnel watching the doors. She had a pulse rifle in her arms, arms that were strongly-built with the rest of her short, thickly-built frame. She had the blue complexion of a Lushan Dorei with dark teal spots framing her face. Her dark purple hair, slightly disheveled from the situation, was pulled into a formal ponytail at the back of her head, and light teal eyes were bordered by the lines of someone growing tired and fatigued. Seldayiv's uniform was standard, with the brown of security/tactical, but Jarod noticed a necklace emblazoned with the moon emblem of the Church of the Eternal Goddess. "Lieutenant?" she asked Richmond.  
  
"I'm sending you with Commander Jarod, he's on his way to the nearest Transporter Station."  
  
"Yes sir," the Dorei replied. She nodded to Jarod. "I'm right behind you, Commander." Her accent reminded Jarod of a Latin accent, but with tones that sounded more Polynesian.  
  
Jarod nodded back and went for the door. "Let's go."  
  
  
  
  
After firing off another pulse pistol shot and nearly getting hit by return fire, Julia ducked back down behind the table. Beside her, Angel took a shot next. The grimace on her face spoke of the pain in her body from the near hit. Without her stubbornness, Julia figured Angel would already have passed out.  
  
As soon as Angel dropped back into cover al-Rashad rose up and took a pair of shots. A third pull of the trigger resulted only in a deep tone. al-Rashad checked her gun and shook her head. "Zero percent. My clip is dead."  
  
"I'm down to five percent myself," Julia said.  
  
"Eight," said Angel. She looked at Julia with a grim expression. "Do you think you could get away down the secondary lift?" She pointed to the lift doors at the far end of the lounge.  
  
"Jarod said it took one of the hits from the Shadow ships. The entire tube is exposed to vacuum."  
  
"Dammit. I was going to tell you two to go and let me cover you." Angel looked frustrated and even a little vulnerable. "What are we going to do if they don't stop coming? When we run out of juice on our guns?"  
  
"What about defensive apps for our omnitools?" al-Rashad suggested.  
  
"That will only work for a little while," Julia said. "Especially given the recharge times required. We can't use those to hold off a determined attack."  
  
"It's still something," al-Rashad insisted.  
  
"It is, and we'll do it." Julia rose up and shot a Cyberman moving past one of his fallen allies. "But we might want to consider praying too. That's all we'll have left in the end."  
  
  
  
  
The Daleks abruptly moved away from the Ark. " _The Genesis Ark is ready for final awakening._ " The black-plated Dalek swiveled to face Rose. " _It requires you to touch the Ark._ "  
  
"Really?" Rose shrugged. "That's too bad, because I'm not doing it."  
  
" _Obey or the male will die!_ "  
  
That seemed to have prompted Rose too change her mind. Mickey went to protest, but she waved him off. "I can't let them," she said. She stepped up toward the Ark  
  
" _Place your hand upon the casket._ "  
  
Rose started to raise her hand toward it… and then stopped and turned. "Although, come to think of it, you're going to kill us anyway, aren't you? Once we're of no use to you."  
  
The Daleks didn't react.  
  
"Well, if I'm about to die, then to hell with it." Rose looked thoughtfully at the lead Dalek. "If you escaped the Time War, don't you want to know what happened? Don't you want to know what happened to the Emperor?"  
  
" _The Emperor survived…?!_ " The Daleks were clearly stunned.  
  
Rose nodded. "Until he met me. If these are my last words, you're going to listen. I met the Emperor. And I took the Time Vortex and I poured it into his head and turned him into dust." She stared into the blue eye of the lead Dake. "Did you get that? The God of all Daleks…" She smiled widely. "...and I destroyed him."  
  
And to really drive it home, Rose let out a giddy, triumphant laugh in the Dalek's face.  
  
With sheer rage the Dalek shrieked, " _You will be_ ** _exterminated!_** "  
  
"Oh, hold on now, just a minute…"  
  
The Daleks and the Humans turned to face the door… and watched the Doctor enter the room.  
  
  
  
  
In the testing lab, Jackie's patience was clearly coming to an end. "How much longer?" she asked. "How long until we can go?"  
  
"I don't know," Robert said, betraying his own growing impatience. It didn't help that the sense of utter doom was growing inside of him. "The Doctor hasn't signaled yet."  
  
"We can't wait for him forever," Yvonne pointed out. "My people are being turned into those _things_. I have to save them."  
  
From a spot near the door, Meridina counseled, "We must show patience. Acting in haste will…"  
  
She was cut off by the cry of pain that came from Robert. He doubled over, dropping the rifle he'd been holding in his rush to grasp his head. Images flooded him, images of worlds being obliterated, of a wave of darkness overwhelming the stars of the galaxy… of all galaxies. A deep, powerful void seemed to beckon before him and threaten to swallow him whole.  
  
Meridina rushed to his side. She took hold of him and tried to enter his mind, to help him, but the sheer power of the vision drove her out. "Swenya's Light…" she gasped.  
  
"What's wrong with him?!" Jackie shouted, necessary to get over another howl of pain from Robert.  
  
"He is sensing a possible future," said Meridina. "A dark and terrible one."  
  
"Bad Wolf," Robert growled. "What are you saying?" In his head he saw Rose yet again, eyes glowing gold. "What do you mean?!"  
  
"The choice will be yours. Bad Wolf."  
  
"Tell me, what are you talking about?!"  
  
The image of Rose disintegrated. A massive vortex of darkness swirled around him. And through it he could feel… _it_. _Them_. Something powerful and malevolent, brimming with hate, stirring.  
  
"No," he rasped. "Is it…?"  
  
At that moment the wall on the other end of the firing range exploded inward. Everyone looked that way save Meridina, who turned to face the doorway… and the sound of metal stomping.  
  
A Cyberman stepped into the doorway, weapon arm raised. " _Surrender for upgrade_ ," it demanded. " _Or you will be deleted_."  
  
The gap in the far wall was soon filled with Cybermen. They too raised their weapons, putting the four in a crossfire. "They're going to kill us!" Jackie wailed.  
  
While Robert was still disorientated, Meridina was not. And she merely answered with, "No, they're not."  
  
The next noise in the air was an electronic snap and lingering hiss. A buzz filled the air and the head of the Cyberman in the door fell away with a flash of blue light. The body toppled inward.  
  
Lucy walked into the door in a slightly dinged beige duty uniform. Her dark, curly hair was disheveled. But there was a grin on her face. She brought her lightsaber up to a ready position with one hand. Her words were quick and to the point.  
  
"So, who's next?"  
  
  
  


**_To Be Continued..._ **


End file.
